Sermons & Meditations

Isaiah 49:8-16a; Matthew 6:25-34
Presented February 27, 2011, by Joel Kline
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

The longer I explore the Hebrew Scriptures, the more I am convinced just how critical for the ancient Israelites was their experience in exile. Few of us have been forcefully displaced from our homes, and so it is perhaps difficult to grasp just how traumatic this time was for that ancient people to see their homeland destroyed, then being coerced to live in enemy territory. It was as if the very underpinnings of their lives had been ripped from them, and once in exile in the Babylonian empire, things only got worse. For the intent of the empire was to redefine life for that Jewish community of old, to replace Jewish perceptions of reality with Babylonian perceptions. The empire sought to define life in terms of Babylonian values, Babylonian hopes and fears, Babylonian desires, Babylonian imperial standards.

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Job 30:26-31; Jonah 3:10-4:11
Presented February 20, 2011, by Joel Kline
The Seventh Sunday after Epiphany

This is one of those sermons far more likely to raise questions than to provide answers. Indeed, if you’re looking for a definitive answer to life’s most troubling questions, I suspect this is not the sermon for you. But if you are convinced, as am I, that it is in our willingness to struggle with life’s complexities; if you believe that it is in grappling with life’s seemingly unanswerable questions that faith may well surprise us and, indeed, come most alive, then I invite you to listen up! It’s been five years to the day that my first wife Janice was killed in a car accident in Little Rock, Arkansas. My purpose this morning is not to spend time recounting all the trauma and grief in the aftermath of that accident, but rather to ponder some of the apparently unanswerable questions that come our way when confronted with the kind of experiences that would lead us to cry, as did that ancient figure, Job, “When I looked for good, evil came; and when I waited for light, darkness came. My inward parts are in turmoil, and are never still; days of affliction come to meet me” (30:26-27). Someone has paraphrased one of those last phrases, “The churning inside me never stops” (Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God).

Who among us this day has not had one of those times of life when our inner churning seemed unstoppable—one of those times when life as we have known it crumbled in upon us? Times of affliction and pain, times of loss and grief, are an integral part of life, a part of life that none of us escapes. Yours may be an unresolved brokenness that keeps you from risking a new relationship, or a lost job that not only creates economic uncertainty but gnaws at your self-esteem, or a recent diagnosis of terminal illness—whether your own, or that of one with whom your life is deeply intertwined. Whatever the particulars, each of us faces our own times when, with Job, we are led to lament that “sunless gloom” surrounds us, that “my lyre is turned to mourning, and my pipe to the voice of those who weep” (30:28, 31). In other words, times when the only song within us is a lament of grief and of pain.

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Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Matthew 5:13-26
Presented February 6, 2011, by Joel Kline
The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

In his epic War and Peace Leo Tolstoy writes of Prince Andrey, one of the key characters of the novel, experiencing the first twinges of love. It was a time when the prince, according to Tolstoy, “felt a new joy in his soul, as though he had come out of a stuffy room into the open daylight.” Both of this morning’s Scripture lessons invite us to take hold of a faith that might well be likened to a matter of stepping into open daylight, moving beyond a “stuffy” faith that knows precious little joy, choosing instead the arduous yet fulfilling way of life in the kingdom of God.

Our text from Deuteronomy, chapter 30, is part of a farewell address Moses offers the ancient Hebrews, as they prepare to enter the Promised Land. After wandering in the wilderness some forty years, the landless people—confused, despairing and demoralized—nevertheless stand at a critical juncture of life. To such a people Moses speaks words of challenge: Choose life so that you and your descendants may live. Moses is appealing to the wanderers to embrace new levels of faith, to give expression to a new courage, to take hold of a new hope, to live in the conviction that a markedly new beginning is indeed possible for them.

Moses urges the people to renew their covenant with God. Biblical scholars assume that the book of Deuteronomy was written down much later than the actual events; indeed, some believe that its compilation may have occurred during that time when the people are returning from years of exile in Babylon. In that case, this text is especially fitting, for the returning exiles face a comparable choice as did their wandering ancestors centuries earlier. The exiles hear a similar challenge to choose life; in a time of deep uncertainty, those exiles are encouraged to turn afresh to God and root their lives in values of justice, compassion, peace, and hope.

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