“Where do we go from here?”

Speaker: Kyle Kerley

Text: 1 John 3:11-18

For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. And we ought to lay down our lives for our family. If anyone has material possessions and see someone in  need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Let us NOT love with words, but with actions.

My name is Kyle Kerley. I’m honored that Joel asked me to speak today. There’s plenty of you that I don’t know, so I figured the reverse is also true – that some of you don’t know who I am – and I’ll start with an introduction. 

1) I am a nurse at a free clinic – very interested in the collisions of health and wealth and for that matter poverty and sickness. I’m also not too terribly interested in diagnosing a president so much as I am diagnosing a society that produced such a president.
2) I am a follower of Jesus – and where that meaning of that phrase is sometimes illusive, I am continually haunted by his name and his message.
3) And I’m an activist – a revolutionary socialist – believing as Martin Luther King did that what is required is – and I’ll quote from a speech I’ll talk about later – what is required is “restructuring the whole of American society”… He says later “America must be born again” It’s not simply that our system is broken and needs a bit of tweaking to be up-to-date. More so that our system is working just the way it is intended and any reform that comes through is an admission of guilt.

To paraphrase (The Other) Martin Luther:
“Here I am, God help me, I can do no other.”

I started coming…

Reading: Isaiah 60:1-6

Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
2 For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
3 Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

4 Lift up your eyes and look around;
they all gather together, they come to you;
your sons shall come from far away,
and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms.
5 Then you shall see and be radiant;
your heart shall thrill and rejoice,[a]
because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you,
the wealth of the nations shall come to you.
6 A multitude of camels shall cover you,
the young camels of Midian and Ephah;
all those from Sheba shall come.
They shall bring gold and frankincense,
and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.

Reflection

The Advent/Christmas/Epiphany season starts in darkness and ends in light.  This follows the cycle of the natural world in the northern hemisphere.

It’s in the darkness that the living are renewed through rest and fresh possibilities.  The darkness is where we are awake to the quiet.  The darkness is the womb of Mary, where Christ grows.

Advent waits patiently for nativity.

And Jesus is born… into a world where emperors make decrees about census counts.  A world of people on the move, back and forth to ancestral lands, making pilgrimage to temples, visiting far off relatives, fleeing violence.  It’s a world of agriculture.  Wild grasses have become wheat and barley, wild beasts have become herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, foraging people have settled down and claimed lands to build, to farm, to accumulate wealth, to defend.   Jesus is born into a swirl of animals and angels, people hungry for food and kings hungry for power.

Nativity widens into Epiphany.

The prophet Isaiah lived well before Jesus, but the times weren’t…

Luke 2:22-40
Isaiah 61:11 – 62:3

It has finally happened.  I have finally reached the magical ministry milestone that has been four years in the making.  Some of  you might not realize that the lectionary, which is a cycle of readings assigned to every Sunday and other Holy Days throughout the year used by congregations across the world, is a three year cycle.  Thus, now that I am in my fourth year of ministry here at Columbus Mennonite, that cycle has finally started to repeat itself.   

For pastors who preach regularly from the lectionary, this fourth year milestone can be a big deal.  I’m not saying sermons get reused word for word, but being able to read old sermons can be a big help.  All the study that went into understanding the texts and digging into word meanings and doing the hard work of exegeting a passage can certainly be borrowed these three, six, nine years later.  There will always be more to learn, but with texts that are thousands of years old, surely some of that work can be reused.

Since I only preach about every other month, the chances that I would be preaching on a Sunday when I already preached are pretty slim.  BUT, this week just happens to be one of the weeks when those planets aligned perfectly.  Which, I found out, might not be that surprising because I recently heard someone refer to the Sundays after Christmas and Easter as “Associate Pastor Sundays.” 

We all hope Joel and his family enjoy their much deserved vacation. 

But, you really don’t have to worry that I’ll ever try to pull one over on you and reuse a sermon word for word.  Some of the study I originally did might be helpful, but any sermon worth its salt will speak to the context of…

Reading: Luke 1:26-38

26In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”29But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” 35The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

Song: STS 11 No wind at the window, v. 1

No wind at the window, no knock at the door; no light from the lampstand, no foot on the floor; no dream born of tiredness, no ghost raised by fear: just an angel and a woman and…

Texts: Isaiah 40:1-6; Mark 1:1-8; Luke 1:46-55

Reading: Isaiah 40:1-4

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. 2Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.  3A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.  4Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.”  

Reflection:

Wilderness, desert, valley, mountain, uneven ground, a plain.  These are the features that inhabit the words of Isaiah to the Jewish exiles in Babylon.  And running through it all, a road, a highway straight and level.

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

For this way to become a way, valleys needed to be lifted up, mountains and hills brought low.  Obstacles would be removed, uneven spots leveled out.

The last time I was on a road in the wilderness was two weeks ago, although it was more a path than a road, and not so much a wilderness as a few acres of woods.  And there were plenty of uneven spots.  But stick with me.

It was the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, late afternoon, the final daylight hours of our family holiday on the farm in Bellefontaine.  It had been a sunny day, but we’d spent a solid four hours cooped up in the basement by the TV, watching young men collide into each other in an attempt to advance an oblong shaped ball down a field toward a designated zone.  With the game over, victory achieved, a renewed sense that all is well and right…