Who are the Good People?
Stories
Contents
"Who are the Good People?" by C. David McKirachan
"Lower Lights" by C. David McKirachan
Who are the Good People?
by C. David McKirachan
Genesis 32:22-31
An elder came to see me asking why Lent and Advent put so much emphasis on confronting our need to repent. Shouldn’t we be focusing on problem solving and lifting spirits? After all, there were a lot of good people in the congregation who needed to be comforted rather than reminded of all the dark places in life.
I wanted to ask him to name the good people. But, resisting my snarky urge, I asked him to turn to this passage in Genesis. We read it together. I asked him who he thought Jacob was wrestling with. Then I asked him why he thought Jacob was wrestling. Then I asked him if he’d ever had to wrestle like that.
We are called to be the new Israel, those who wrestle or contend with God. As individuals and as communities it is our job description to strive to be close to the one who made us, saved us, and moves among us. There is no social distancing with God. Jacob’s birth name came from the grip he had on his older twin’s heel at birth. And his new name, Israel was given to him basically because he wouldn’t let go. It had nothing to do with virtue or wisdom. The evidence was in and Jacob came up wanting. He was just too stubborn to know when to quit.
Our culture’s blemishes are plain to see. We are blatantly self-centered, unwilling to pay the price to be good to our environment or each other. We’d rather watch reality TV than live it. We are amusing ourselves to death. The gospel gives us clear directions how to take responsibility for peace making, sharing, forgiving, and witnessing to the power of God’s truth, and we divert our priorities because of budgets, timidity, and lukewarm commitment. That’s who we are. We like Jacob have come up wanting.
Yet we are called to hold on to God anyway, sinners one and all.
The only mistake we can make is forgetting with whom we wrestle. We’re not in this to win. We’re in this because God won’t let us go. In a wrestling match, you get points for a good escape. But you get more for a take-down, a reversal, and a pin. We’re not about to pin God.
If we are willing to stay in the match, to hold onto this terrible intimacy with God, we begin to learn what we can be, what we’ve been made to be. Not in control, that’s for sure. Life’s not like that. It’s full of surprises, very few of which allow us to stick to our agendas. Those who aren’t willing to be surprised make very poor students or teachers. As a result, in our fear of losing control we back away from intimacy with anything that exposes our silliness. No wonder we want a gospel of comfort and self-improvement. Hey, we’re pretty good at sit-coms.
But this is no sit-com. Life is rarely amusing, nor are the problems resolved in half an hour. The issues of living are real. More real than any neat formula or diagnosis can contain or give us easy solutions. Life is fascinating, glorious, mind boggling, or it is painful, heartbreaking, crushing. Sometimes all of them together and for too many the last three as a rule. As ol’ blue eyes sang, “That’s Life.” God’s presence does not give us an easy comforting solution, or a way to accomplish all our own hopes and dreams.
Christ’s gospel begins with the cross and holds it before us not only as a sign of what God has done for us, but as an ever-present agenda of what we are called to face if we follow our Lord and Savior. His willingness to live close to his father God brought him to that cross. And no matter how much we want to be comforted and self-improved, if we’re going to stay in touch with what he did and said, if we’re not going to let anything shake us loose from his grip on us and our grip on him, we’ve got to take up our cross and follow him.
Not very amusing is it?
Even the best comedy writers would have a hard time turning plague, social upheaval, ecological crisis, and a narcissistic abdication of responsibility into a situation that calls for laughs, let alone resolution. This wrestling match is demonstrating our weaknesses and limitations vividly.
But the gospel is good news. And that good news is: God won’t let go. The daunting calling that drags us to make it through this dark night, then calls us to cross the river to meet our mistakes face to face. That’s our happy ending? Well, it’s the only way to be faithful and to begin again.
I believe in God’s ability to bring us to a new day. I have no idea what it will look like, or how much of now we’ll have then, but “That’s Life,” and that’s part of God’s faithfulness. God won’t let go.
I’m afraid the elder left my office shaking his head. But hey, we had some good Bible study. First time he’d been to one since confirmation. He told me he didn’t get much out of that either.
Hang on Lord.
* * *
Lower Lights
by C. David McKirachan
Isaiah 55:1-5, Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21
Most of my ministry was spent balancing on a three-way edge. I know, there’s no such thing, but bear with me. Praise, pastoral caring, and social action. Each pulling, demanding attention and priority. In worship it translates to: praise and adoration, attention to the personal issues of the congregation, and prophetic confrontation with social issues we must face. You could even make it trinitarian if you want to go that way. But it’s hard to keep it balanced. And sometimes it’s not appropriate to keep it balanced.
Today’s scriptures seem to do a lot of confronting with all the ‘eating for free’ business. That’s downright socialistic, if we’re allowed to use such horrible words to describe scripture. It flips on its head our culture’s priority. It demands that our priority be the covenant with the Lord rather than labor and business. It says the getting-ahead-by-working and the getting-paid-way is not only going against God’s teaching, it says that such a journey will not yield satisfaction. We’ll still be hungry. Nobody was ever very good at listening to this. The year of jubilee in which all debt was to be canceled was never observed. Tithing is a joke. And bringing the homeless into our own homes doesn’t happen.
A sermon that lifted up being faithful to such insane ideas as God’s way would not be greeted with affirmation in certain political or business circles. After all we’ve made getting back to work and back to business more of a priority than the health and safety of our citizens by re-opening, by trying to go back to business-as-usual even though the COVID-19 figures continue to rise. Our culture demands. If we present a sermon about being faithful to God’s covenant, we’d be teetering off the balance. Not much praise and adoration in such a sermon. And comfort? It’s more like a declaration of war.
So, maybe we should see what’s available in the epistle and the gospel for this Sunday? See what I mean?
The 21st verse of the 145th Psalm is, “My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and let all flesh bless his holy name for ever and ever.”
Now that’s down in the praise category. But can we speak the praise of the Lord and bless God’s holy name if we are unwilling to trust in the Lord and open ourselves to the Spirit that demands and inspires us to move beyond calling ourselves Christians to a faith that leads us to take up our crosses and follow this guy named Jesus? (long sentence, but I think you get the drift).
And, are we really being open to the needs of the world, reaching through our own issues toward others who are in pain? Can we ever satisfy the hunger of the people in the pew if we pat them on the head, help them along today, without helping them discover that the source of all healing and satisfaction lies beyond them and theirs? They are part of the kingdom of the Christ. They have a role to play in being the light to the world.
My mother had a lot of favorite hymns. But when we came to choosing hymns for her funeral, it was easy. “Come Labor On”, “For All the Saints”, and “Let the Lower Lights Be Burning.” All of them have to do with being active in the labor of bringing the good news to the world. Not just by singing and smiling and saying praise the Lord, but by helping, which sometimes means confronting.
We had a family reunion and memorial service a few months after she died. We had T shirts printed up, with Barnegat Light House on the front. She and Daddy lived on the island and loved the shore. Under the light house were the words, Brightly Beams…
My mother’s life was full of joy and praise. She would sing at the drop of a hat. But she believed that the joy she had was a gift, a ‘lower light’, if I can quote the song.
Brightly beams our father’s mercy from his light house ever more
But to us he gives the keeping of the lights along the shore.
Let the lower lights be burning, send the gleam across the way
Some poor fainting struggling seaman you may rescue, you may save.
I don’t know if anybody would call my mother ‘balanced.’ But I don’t think anybody called Christ that either. Maybe we need to come down off the balance and let our lights shine. Beach parties are fun.
*****************************************
StoryShare, August 2, 2020, issue.
Copyright 2020 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"Who are the Good People?" by C. David McKirachan
"Lower Lights" by C. David McKirachan
Who are the Good People?
by C. David McKirachan
Genesis 32:22-31
An elder came to see me asking why Lent and Advent put so much emphasis on confronting our need to repent. Shouldn’t we be focusing on problem solving and lifting spirits? After all, there were a lot of good people in the congregation who needed to be comforted rather than reminded of all the dark places in life.
I wanted to ask him to name the good people. But, resisting my snarky urge, I asked him to turn to this passage in Genesis. We read it together. I asked him who he thought Jacob was wrestling with. Then I asked him why he thought Jacob was wrestling. Then I asked him if he’d ever had to wrestle like that.
We are called to be the new Israel, those who wrestle or contend with God. As individuals and as communities it is our job description to strive to be close to the one who made us, saved us, and moves among us. There is no social distancing with God. Jacob’s birth name came from the grip he had on his older twin’s heel at birth. And his new name, Israel was given to him basically because he wouldn’t let go. It had nothing to do with virtue or wisdom. The evidence was in and Jacob came up wanting. He was just too stubborn to know when to quit.
Our culture’s blemishes are plain to see. We are blatantly self-centered, unwilling to pay the price to be good to our environment or each other. We’d rather watch reality TV than live it. We are amusing ourselves to death. The gospel gives us clear directions how to take responsibility for peace making, sharing, forgiving, and witnessing to the power of God’s truth, and we divert our priorities because of budgets, timidity, and lukewarm commitment. That’s who we are. We like Jacob have come up wanting.
Yet we are called to hold on to God anyway, sinners one and all.
The only mistake we can make is forgetting with whom we wrestle. We’re not in this to win. We’re in this because God won’t let us go. In a wrestling match, you get points for a good escape. But you get more for a take-down, a reversal, and a pin. We’re not about to pin God.
If we are willing to stay in the match, to hold onto this terrible intimacy with God, we begin to learn what we can be, what we’ve been made to be. Not in control, that’s for sure. Life’s not like that. It’s full of surprises, very few of which allow us to stick to our agendas. Those who aren’t willing to be surprised make very poor students or teachers. As a result, in our fear of losing control we back away from intimacy with anything that exposes our silliness. No wonder we want a gospel of comfort and self-improvement. Hey, we’re pretty good at sit-coms.
But this is no sit-com. Life is rarely amusing, nor are the problems resolved in half an hour. The issues of living are real. More real than any neat formula or diagnosis can contain or give us easy solutions. Life is fascinating, glorious, mind boggling, or it is painful, heartbreaking, crushing. Sometimes all of them together and for too many the last three as a rule. As ol’ blue eyes sang, “That’s Life.” God’s presence does not give us an easy comforting solution, or a way to accomplish all our own hopes and dreams.
Christ’s gospel begins with the cross and holds it before us not only as a sign of what God has done for us, but as an ever-present agenda of what we are called to face if we follow our Lord and Savior. His willingness to live close to his father God brought him to that cross. And no matter how much we want to be comforted and self-improved, if we’re going to stay in touch with what he did and said, if we’re not going to let anything shake us loose from his grip on us and our grip on him, we’ve got to take up our cross and follow him.
Not very amusing is it?
Even the best comedy writers would have a hard time turning plague, social upheaval, ecological crisis, and a narcissistic abdication of responsibility into a situation that calls for laughs, let alone resolution. This wrestling match is demonstrating our weaknesses and limitations vividly.
But the gospel is good news. And that good news is: God won’t let go. The daunting calling that drags us to make it through this dark night, then calls us to cross the river to meet our mistakes face to face. That’s our happy ending? Well, it’s the only way to be faithful and to begin again.
I believe in God’s ability to bring us to a new day. I have no idea what it will look like, or how much of now we’ll have then, but “That’s Life,” and that’s part of God’s faithfulness. God won’t let go.
I’m afraid the elder left my office shaking his head. But hey, we had some good Bible study. First time he’d been to one since confirmation. He told me he didn’t get much out of that either.
Hang on Lord.
* * *
Lower Lights
by C. David McKirachan
Isaiah 55:1-5, Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21
Most of my ministry was spent balancing on a three-way edge. I know, there’s no such thing, but bear with me. Praise, pastoral caring, and social action. Each pulling, demanding attention and priority. In worship it translates to: praise and adoration, attention to the personal issues of the congregation, and prophetic confrontation with social issues we must face. You could even make it trinitarian if you want to go that way. But it’s hard to keep it balanced. And sometimes it’s not appropriate to keep it balanced.
Today’s scriptures seem to do a lot of confronting with all the ‘eating for free’ business. That’s downright socialistic, if we’re allowed to use such horrible words to describe scripture. It flips on its head our culture’s priority. It demands that our priority be the covenant with the Lord rather than labor and business. It says the getting-ahead-by-working and the getting-paid-way is not only going against God’s teaching, it says that such a journey will not yield satisfaction. We’ll still be hungry. Nobody was ever very good at listening to this. The year of jubilee in which all debt was to be canceled was never observed. Tithing is a joke. And bringing the homeless into our own homes doesn’t happen.
A sermon that lifted up being faithful to such insane ideas as God’s way would not be greeted with affirmation in certain political or business circles. After all we’ve made getting back to work and back to business more of a priority than the health and safety of our citizens by re-opening, by trying to go back to business-as-usual even though the COVID-19 figures continue to rise. Our culture demands. If we present a sermon about being faithful to God’s covenant, we’d be teetering off the balance. Not much praise and adoration in such a sermon. And comfort? It’s more like a declaration of war.
So, maybe we should see what’s available in the epistle and the gospel for this Sunday? See what I mean?
The 21st verse of the 145th Psalm is, “My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and let all flesh bless his holy name for ever and ever.”
Now that’s down in the praise category. But can we speak the praise of the Lord and bless God’s holy name if we are unwilling to trust in the Lord and open ourselves to the Spirit that demands and inspires us to move beyond calling ourselves Christians to a faith that leads us to take up our crosses and follow this guy named Jesus? (long sentence, but I think you get the drift).
And, are we really being open to the needs of the world, reaching through our own issues toward others who are in pain? Can we ever satisfy the hunger of the people in the pew if we pat them on the head, help them along today, without helping them discover that the source of all healing and satisfaction lies beyond them and theirs? They are part of the kingdom of the Christ. They have a role to play in being the light to the world.
My mother had a lot of favorite hymns. But when we came to choosing hymns for her funeral, it was easy. “Come Labor On”, “For All the Saints”, and “Let the Lower Lights Be Burning.” All of them have to do with being active in the labor of bringing the good news to the world. Not just by singing and smiling and saying praise the Lord, but by helping, which sometimes means confronting.
We had a family reunion and memorial service a few months after she died. We had T shirts printed up, with Barnegat Light House on the front. She and Daddy lived on the island and loved the shore. Under the light house were the words, Brightly Beams…
My mother’s life was full of joy and praise. She would sing at the drop of a hat. But she believed that the joy she had was a gift, a ‘lower light’, if I can quote the song.
Brightly beams our father’s mercy from his light house ever more
But to us he gives the keeping of the lights along the shore.
Let the lower lights be burning, send the gleam across the way
Some poor fainting struggling seaman you may rescue, you may save.
I don’t know if anybody would call my mother ‘balanced.’ But I don’t think anybody called Christ that either. Maybe we need to come down off the balance and let our lights shine. Beach parties are fun.
*****************************************
StoryShare, August 2, 2020, issue.
Copyright 2020 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
