Sermons & Meditations

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Matthew 14:13-21
Presented July 31, 2011, by Joel Kline
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Donna and I recently spent a week’s vacation in Boston. Our hotel was located a fair distance from public transportation, so we were taking a hotel shuttle from the subway back to our lodging. A young family was in the seat in front of us, and as we made conversation, the older daughter—quick to let us know that she was 5½ years old—made note of my T-shirt highlighting a walk/run event, and asked me if I had run today. No, I explained, I used to run, but I’ve had some problems with my back, so now I walk instead. “Is that because you’re old?” asked the little girl, much to her parent’s chagrin. And then she continued, very matter-of-factly, “You must be old, because your hair is very white.”

While it may be a worthy discussion at some other time, my purpose this morning is not to consider my own aging process, except to note that with age has come a growing conviction that faith has far less to do with certainty, with having all the answers, than it does with a willingness to embrace a particular perspective towards life, to place one’s trust in the goodness of God—even, and perhaps especially, at those times when appearances would suggest the very opposite, when it looks as if pain and grief, violence and injustice and despair, may well have the final word in our living.

Increasingly I find myself impatient with those who are prone to reduce the Christian faith to little more than a series of outward rules and regulations, a checklist that would define who’s in and who’s out of the household of faith. The life of faith, by very definition, is not about exclusion, but about a willingness to grapple seriously with how to incorporate the incredible message of God’s gracious love. The life of faith is not about certainty, but instead, about risk-taking. Faith is a matter of trust, taking the risk of placing our lives in the hands of a God who reveals himself to us, in the words of biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, through a “disruptive grace.”

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Psalm 85:8-13; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Presented July 24, 2011, by Joel Kline
The 6th Sunday after Pentecost

The poet Mary Oliver ends her volume of poems entitled Thirst with a meditation by that name. Listen to her words:

Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have. I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell; grant me, in your mercy, a little more time. Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart. Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.

The poet’s words remind us that there is no automatic pilot in the life of faith, but instead we are challenged to invest ourselves, our time and our energy, in the pursuit of faithful living. Even more, we are invited to pay attention—to the wonders of creation, to the gift of relationships, to the inner conversations of our heart, and particularly to the yearnings—the hungering and the thirsting—that haunt the depths of our hearts. Thirsting for the goodness we do not yet fully have; hungering for God’s new creation that is not yet fully in place among us—the promised reign of justice, compassion, peace, and new life; yearning for the courage to listen for the Spirit’s proddings, which may well carry us, we know not where.

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Isaiah 55:10-13; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Presented July 10, 2011, by Joel Kline
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

These are not easy days to be the church, with pressures coming both from inside the church and from without. Outside voices frequently dismiss the church as having little to offer, or hear only the strident side of the church—those who are prone to reduce the Christian story to a matter of judgment and harsh rejection, linking faith with discordant politics. Deep divisions characterize life inside the church, with factions of the church frequently at odds with one another over their understanding of what it means to live and serve as the people of God for this time and in this world.

In the preface to his book, A New Kind of Christianity, Brian McLaren speaks of a host of conversations and encounters he has had while traveling around the world, “in hot ramshackle urban slums in Latin America, in tree-shaded rural villages in Africa, in well-appointed conference centers, church basements, and coffee shops in Asia, Europe, and the Americas”—conversations and encounters across an amazing array of denominational lines that confirm what he describes as a bad news, encouraging news scenario. The bad news, asserts McLaren: the Christian faith in all its forms is in trouble. The good news: the Christian faith in all its forms is pregnant with new possibilities.

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