Sermons & Meditations

Luke 14:25-33; Romans 6:1-4
Presented May 23, 2010, by Joel Kline
Pentecost Sunday

In his book Let Your Life Speak Quaker author Parker Palmer suggests that when we are grappling with our calling in life—our vocation, our purpose, our identity—it is important that we pay attention to our deepest longings. Writes Palmer, “I must listen for…the standards by which I cannot help but live if I am living my own life.” For those of us who embrace the Christian faith, there is a recognition that the values and standards upon which we cannot help but live—these values and norms are integrally intertwined with our identity. Many would portray the Christian faith as something which is imposed upon us from the outside, with God compelling us to do what we would never choose to do, were God to leave us alone. The gospel—the good news—Jesus proclaimed does indeed confront us with high standards, but God is not an angry tyrant forcing us to embrace life in God’s realm; rather, God invites us to take hold of that which will enable us to more fully become the persons God created us to be.

At one level today’s Gospel lesson seems quite severe, and we could very well assume Jesus to be a hard taskmaster as he urges the pathway of radical obedience. This text, frequently associated in Church of the Brethren tradition with the rigors of baptism, reminds us that there is a counting of the cost of discipleship to be done. Strong language, with Luke telling us that Jesus even asserts that whoever would follow him must “hate father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself” (Luke 14:26). Matthew, in his telling of the gospel, finds that language far too severe, suggesting that Jesus said instead, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:27). Whatever the original language, Jesus—the one who ever challenges us to extend hospitality to the stranger, to love our enemies, to take the risk of binding the wounds of the broken, to go the extra mile in relationship—this Jesus is not asking us literally to hate anyone. Rather, Jesus is urging us to take a serious look at our priorities, at where our primary loyalty in life lies. Jesus reminds us that he is setting before us another way of living—a life centered in justice and peace, mercy and compassion, self-giving love and grace beyond measure. And as we pay attention to our deepest yearnings for this new way of living, we find ourselves drawn to life with a generous God at the very center of our living. We do indeed find ourselves choosing a new set of values, a complete re-ordering of our priorities.

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Luke 4:16-21; Romans 12:1-2, 9-21
Presented May 9, 2010, by Joel Kline
The Sixth Sunday of Easter

Henri Nouwen relates an old tale from the Jewish Talmud entitled “The Fugitive and the Rabbi.” It’s the story of a young man, seeking to hide from the enemy, entering a small village. The people were kind to the stranger and offered a place to stay, but when soldiers came searching for the fugitive, everyone became quite fearful, particularly when the soldiers threatened to burn the village and kill each resident unless the young man was handed over before dawn. The people went to their rabbi, seeking wisdom and advice. As you might expect, the rabbi was torn by the difficult options before the community, and so he withdrew to his room to study the Scriptures, hoping to find an answer before the dawn deadline. In the early morning his eyes fell on these words: “It is better that one man dies than that the whole people be lost.”

The rabbi closed the Bible, called the soldiers, and told them where the fugitive was hidden. After the soldiers led the young man away, the villagers gathered together and feasted, giving thanks that the rabbi had saved their lives. But the rabbi could not celebrate. Overcome with deep sadness, he remained alone in his room. That night an angel came to him and asked, “What have you done?” “I handed over the fugitive,” replied the rabbi. “But don’t you know,” countered the angel, “that you have handed over the Messiah?” “How could I have known?” questioned the rabbi anxiously. To which the angel responded, “If, instead of reading your Bible, you had visited the young man just once and looked into his eyes, you would have known.”

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John 20:19-31; Acts 5:27-32
Presented April 11, 2010, by Joel D. Kline
The Second Sunday of Easter

In some circles of the church this first Sunday following Easter is called Low Sunday. We know something of that, don’t we? A quick look at our own church records from the past several years shows worship attendance to be at least 100 less on the first Sunday after Easter than on Easter Day. Of course, Easter is a time for family, guests, and visitors, and a time when most in the church—and many on the fringes—make an effort to be a part of worship. But even more, Low Sunday may well have to do with the difficulty of maintaining the promise and excitement of Easter when we find ourselves so quickly back in the midst of business as usual. Back to a world of April 15 IRS deadlines; back to a world all too familiar with headlines underscoring life’s uncertainties—reports of ongoing wars, troubled economies, and mining tragedies; back to a far-less-than-Easter kind of world.

The early church, it would seem, experienced some of the same struggles—not so much about worship attendance, but in seeking to make sense of the Easter message in a world that seemed anything but an Easter kind of world. Biblical scholars generally agree that John’s Gospel is the latest of the four Gospels to be written, likely penned some 60 years or so following the first Easter. It was a time when most, if not all, of the eyewitnesses to the resurrection had died off, a time when the fledgling Christian community was increasingly being isolated from its Jewish roots, a time when growing numbers of early believers may well have been questioning if the faith was worth holding on to. With such issues in mind, John writes his Gospel, asserting the purpose of his Gospel to be that his readers might continue “to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing in him you might have life in his name” (20:31).

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Isaiah 65:17-25; John 20:1-18
Presented April 4, 2010, by Joel D. Kline
Easter Sunday

The noted preacher and story-teller Fred Craddock tells of attending a Thanksgiving worship service at a nearby church, where he could scarcely focus on the worship because a couple sitting in front of him talked through the entire service. Craddock recalls that the man and woman weren’t young people, but rather nearly as old as he—surely old enough to know better! But there they sat—punching each other, talking about each of the choir members, criticizing the choice of hymns, critiquing everything and everyone. “Why did they come?” Craddock wondered, and then he writes:

If you’re not going to be awake; if you don’t enter every room, every relationship, every moment saying, “This could be it,” you will miss [out]. Stay alert; stay alert.

You know, I had a thought, not much of a thought, but a thought. Suppose, let’s just suppose, that God, who is so full of surprises, were to come among us a baby—a crying, red-faced Jewish baby, seven pounds, three ounces, kicking arms and legs, with a band around the middle holding the tied cord, a mother attending, a poor carpenter man standing there looking on. What if God were to do it that way? Do you think you’d miss it? I’m going to stay awake. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

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Luke 19:28-42; Philippians 2:5-11
March 28, 2010, by Joel D. Kline
Palm Sunday

A pivotal verse in Luke’s Gospel is found in chapter nine, verse fifty-one, where the Gospel writer tells us that Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem,” only verses after having announced to his followers that “the Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands” (9:44).  The following chapters portray Jesus on the move, journeying intentionally toward the city that had become, over the centuries, the very center of Jewish life—the city that gave witness both to the people’s faith and to their unfaithfulness, the city where the act of betrayal would unfold. Still, Luke depicts the journeying Jesus as unwavering in the challenging mission of announcing an alternative vision for human life. Jesus steadfastly gives voice and witness to life centered in the values of the kingdom of God, life focused upon the ways of mercy and compassion, justice and peace, self-giving love and servanthood. Jesus remains constant in this proclamation while moving with determination toward Jerusalem.

As we reach this morning’s text from Luke 19, Jesus stands ready to enter the city. This is no spur-of-the-moment decision, but rather an opportunity for Jesus to embody to the fullest what he had long been proclaiming. It is apparent that Jesus had made arrangements ahead of time for the use of a young donkey, enabling him to bring into reality imagery from the prophet Zechariah, who had anticipated a time when a new kind of ruler would emerge, a peaceful king who would dismantle the weaponry of war. This peaceful king, asserted the prophet, would come “humble and riding on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9); even more, continues Zechariah, this new ruler “will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations” (9:10). The prophet envisions, with the coming of this king of peace, that war shall be banished from the land: no more chariots, no more war horses, no more weapons of destruction.

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