Sermons & Meditations

John 4, Blessed are the pure in heart…
Presented March 27, 2011, by Joel Kline
The Third Sunday in Lent

I recently read that Mahatma Gandhi, that great advocate for nonviolent social change in India, was once asked what he thought of Western civilization. Gandhi pondered and then responded, “I think it would be a good idea.” Something similar, suggests William Sloane Coffin, could be said of the beatitudes of Jesus, which are often celebrated as words of simple beauty, but seldom are deemed to have any real credence in today’s world. The beatitudes, says Coffin, “clearly have little place among acceptable ideas in American culture.”

This seems especially true of today’s beatitude, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God (Matthew 5:8). A lovely sentiment, to be sure, but haven’t we been taught from little on up to be wary of the intentions of others, to assume that even those who might appear to be pure of motive may well not be so? And don’t we recognize just how difficult it is to move beyond our own need to control and manipulate persons and events to suit our inner yearnings and desires? Psychotherapist and ordained minister Eric Kolbell, in his book What Jesus Meant, makes the assertion that each of the beatitudes of Jesus demands something of us, except this one, which demands everything of us. The familiar words of the hymn, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, speak of a “love so amazing, so divine” that it “demands my soul, my life, my all.”

(more…)

Matthew 4:1-11
Presented March 13, 2011, by Joel Kline
The First Sunday in Lent

Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor makes the assertion that “the church’s central task is an imaginative one.” She’s not speaking of imagination as the creation of fiction, but rather imagination as the ability to envision something markedly different from that to which we are tempted to grow comfortable. Imagination involves seeing in our mind’s eye new possibilities for our living, new levels of connectedness with God and one another, new expressions of faithful living in a broken world, new ways of embodying the grace and compassion and peace of our God. In his book about the beatitudes, entitled What Jesus Meant, psychotherapist and ordained minister Eric Kolbell affirms a similar understanding of the gift of imagination. “If you want to see what the kingdom of God could look like,” asserts Kolbell,

Take the world as you know it and turn it on its head. That is to say, imagine it free of the tyranny, poverty, loneliness, and greed that now hold it in thrall. Imagine it loosed of the unholy trinity of ignorance, arrogance, and indifference that conspire to suffocate all remnants of hope. Imagine the hungry fed and the just vindicated, the poor satisfied and the pure sanctified. Imagine a world governed by an urge for compassion rather than a will to power. Imagine all this…because this is what God imagines…Imagine such a world, [Jesus told his listeners], and then, having imagined it, live in accordance with it. Live it into being. Live as though the world is turned upside down…

Surely this is the power of the blessings, the beatitudes, with which Jesus begins his Sermon on the Mount. The beatitudes are pillars of wisdom, spoken with an economy of words, crystallizing the very heart of God’s vision for human life. Can you not imagine Jesus, in that wilderness time following his baptism, seeking clarity about the nature of that vision, questioning within himself whether he has indeed rightly discerned God’s calling and God’s mind, grappling with the sum and substance of this ministry he is on the verge of initiating? It is a critical time for Jesus, as he anticipates living this new way of life into being, and the Gospel writer asserts that it is the very Spirit of God who leads Jesus into the wilderness for this time of pondering and reflection. No mild and sweet dove, this Spirit, but instead a Spirit with claws and talons, a challenging and disturbing Spirit who will not rest satisfied with business as usual.

(more…)

Matthew 17:1-9
Presented March 6, 2011, by Joel Kline
Transfiguration Sunday

In his book The Magnificent Defeat Frederick Buechner tells of spending summers at a house near the top of a small mountain in Vermont. Buechner recalls a time when friends were visiting, sitting together on the porch that affords a marvelous view of the surrounding countryside. Conversation had quieted, when without warning one of the visitors remarked, “There’s just one thing I don’t understand. Why on earth do you ever leave this place?” We know what the friend was asking, don’t we? Some of us may own a vacation home, a place where we are prone to bask in the wonders and beauty of God’s creation, a place where we can leave many of the troubles of life behind. Others of us can envision in our mind’s eye a favorite place—perhaps several of them—where we go for times of rest and renewal—places where we quiet ourselves long enough to appreciate the wonders of the natural world and the grandeur of the moment.

In this morning’s Gospel lesson Peter wants to do something very similar. It’s the intriguing story of the transfiguration of Jesus, a time when Jesus has invited three of the disciples to climb the mountaintop with him, likely a time for reflection and prayer, a time for self-examination, a time for pondering the direction of his ministry. Only verses earlier in the first Gospel, Matthew tells the story of Peter making an insightful confession about Jesus, asserting “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (16:16). Jesus initially commends Peter, but then goes on to speak of the kind of Messiah or Christ he will be, a suffering servant who must head to Jerusalem where he will be arrested and tried, put to death, and after three days be raised to new life. Peter, you may recall, is appalled by this word that Jesus will face suffering, and so rebukes Jesus while crying out, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!” (16:22).

(more…)