Sermons & Meditations

Matthew 21:28-3; Philippians 2:1-13
Presented September 25, 2011, by Joel Kline
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Back in the mid-1800s, when our nation was deeply divided and a civil war loomed ahead of us, Frederick Douglass was heard to assert, “I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with legs.” You may remember his story, how he escaped from slavery, attesting that, upon experiencing freedom, he “lived more in one day than in a year of [his] slave life.”  Douglass soon became a noted leader of the abolitionist movement and a powerful voice for justice.

Frederick Douglass’s reflections offer significant reminder that prayer is not simply a matter of sitting on our tails and waiting for God to act, nor is it intended to be an excuse for us to take less responsibility than the situation demands. Rather, in prayerful communion with God we may well find ourselves challenged to embark upon risky action. Prayer is not a substitute for action. Instead, prayer and action are deeply intertwined; prayer and action go hand in hand.

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Jeremiah 2:1-13; Matthew 20:1-16
Presented September 18, 2011, by Joel Kline
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

One of my favorite Mary Oliver poems is entitled When Death Comes, the poet’s reflections regarding how she wants to live her life and have that life remembered. Asserts Mary Oliver,

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited the world.
(New and Selected Poems, Volume One, pp. 10-11)

Can you not hear echoes of life’s critical questions resounding in Mary Oliver’s verses? How shall we live our lives? What do we want our lives to count for? The poet speaks of her intention to live in such a way that she has not merely glimpsed the world around her, visiting it as would a tourist, but rather as one who enters fully into life—receiving life as gift, embracing that gift with a sense of wonder and amazement and gratitude, taking hold of life’s goodness and life’s possibilities, not with fear, but with energy and passion.

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Genesis 50:15-21; Matthew 18:21-35
Presented September 11, 2011, by Joel Kline,
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

In the early days of my pastoral ministry, perhaps thirty years ago, I encountered a book of meditations by United Methodist clergy Robert Raines entitled Living the Questions. Raines labels one of his reflections, “God’s People on the Move,” and it speaks of church life at this time of year when, after somewhat slower-paced summer schedules, church programming moves back into higher gear. Here at Highland Avenue new mentoring pairs are forming, teachers are in place for children’s, youth and adult Sunday School classes, and our stewardship focus soon begins. We embrace this higher level of programming, not simply to keep ourselves busy, but to create opportunities for deepening relationship with God and one another, times for intentionally exploring together our purpose and calling in life. Robert Raines puts it this way:

Come back to go ahead,
to go ahead together as God’s people on the move.
To go ahead in exploring direction and meaning
for our lives as individuals and together.
To go ahead in offering ourselves to be used by God
in his healing work in our families,
on our jobs, in our city and nation and world.

Come back to begin again.
To begin again the search for integrity and meaning.
To begin again the work of sharing the suffering
of people—the least of these around us,
and the most of these too.
To begin again the digging together for insight and
strength in our faith and fellowship.

Come back to worship.
There is no substitute for being together, face to face,
singing, crying, dancing, praying, waiting, hoping, loving.
Worship is nothing less than the Spirit of God
in our midst, wakening, opening, disturbing, delighting us.

Come back to sing a new song,
leap over a barrier,
break through a problem,
unlock a purpose,
restore hope,
renew faith,
rekindle love,
and participate in the life of
God’s people on the move.

It’s a bit of an irony, isn’t it, on this day when we gather to consider how best to rekindle love, restore hope, and deepen faith, to realize that, at another level of our living, today marks a very different remembrance—the 10^th anniversary of the still-shocking events of September 11, 2001. It’s a powerful reminder that life includes both difficulty and promise, both struggle and hope, both uncertainty and resolve.

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