MY FAVORITE SCRIPTURES & LAST
THOUGHTS
Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser
July 21, 2019 Last Sermon at Indiantown Presbyterian Church
I wanted our last Sunday together to
be something rather different, so after some consideration, I decided to share
some of my favorite prayers, songs and Scriptures today.
At a presbytery meeting back in MO, I was tasked
with presenting a man who was retiring, and I was to ask him one question
before all his friends began to speak.
He looked a little nervous as I called him forward, but as I asked my
question his face broke out in a big smile.
I asked him, “Is there a special Scripture that has stayed with you and
been important in your spiritual life over the years? “ His answer was ready on his lips before I
finished asking.
I like to ask about people’s spiritual lives. Sometimes I’ve asked new pastors moving into
our presbyteries, when we get to ask questions, What is something that their prayer life is working on in their hearts
now? See, I believe faith is a life-long
journey, and there’s always something percolating, always as edge, always a
growth happening. And not just for
preachers - for anyone with a vital spiritual life.
So in hopes that it will spark some
reflection in each of us here, I'm sharing some of my memories, and scriptures, that moved along my own faith journey with God. In a
recent article by Barbara Brown Taylor, she mentions a Sunday School song that
captured her imagination as a young person, “Jesus loves the little children,
all the children of the world.
Red, brown, yellow, black and white, they are precious in God’s
sight. Jesus loves the little children
of the world.” She credits that song with giving a foundation for her
anti-racism work as an adult. See, sometimes
certain teachings hit fertile soil; like Jesus’ parable, sometimes the seeds
fall on good soil & stick with us.
Philippians 2:13
If I were asked that same question as I asked that retiring
man, my verse would be Philippians 2:13, where the apostle Paul tells those
early disciples at Philippi that its God who is at work in them, enabling them
to both will and to work for God’s good pleasure. Its not a verse many people memorize, yet the
Holy Spirit spoke to me as a teenager with those words, reassuring me that even
the desire to do what God asks, even the will to do it, shows that God is alive
and working in me - and in us. See, I have always
had almost impossibly high standards for myself. What I took in from my home church was a
fear-based faith, where God was watching and counting and ready to judge and
punish. Obedience was expected, and
disobedience was punished. I was
determined to be a very good girl and avoid punishments, of which I was afraid,
as it was often severe. Yes, I heard the
words about mercy and grace in church, but that only meant that God had provided a
way for me to not go to hell, if I would accept it and live right. I didn’t know much about forgiveness except
it was necessary to go to heaven. So I
rather overdid things in the fearful
obedience quarter, searching out minutiae to follow punctiliously. I was upset that I couldn’t keep all of my
good intentions like praying constantly or even getting up early to have my
devotion time. I didn’t like everybody,
either, although I tried to see the best in them. So I was constantly tied up in knots of fear
in my insides.
Reading this verse, that said even the will to please God
was evidence of God working in me, was so reassuring. It was mercy and grace that God was okay with
me even when my goals fell short of achievement. It was forgiveness for when I thought I fell
short. I could relax and breathe. When I later read about Martin Luther’s
almost obsessive confession of minutiae, and the relief he found when the words
hit him that salvation was given by grace through faith, I understood. According to the story, he was mounting up
steps to a shrine, and doing it on his knees, when the words hit him, and he
stood up and went back down - no need for all the supererogatory works -
salvation was by faith. (Although I do like the book of James, which Luther
wanted removed from the Bible…)
This verse remains among my most treasured Scriptures. I still desire deep in my heart that my life
be pleasing to God, and that I continue to learn to live in the kindom of God
and show it to the world - and at the same time, its not fear-based, because I
will fall short most of the time.
Galatians 3:28
I preached on Galatians 3:28 a few
weeks ago, the Scripture where Paul waxes eloquent about how in Christ we are
all new creations, and writes, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no
longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are
one in Christ Jesus.” Its a manifesto of
the radical equality of worth of all people, in the eyes of God. When we come to Christ and become a part of
that new creation, that new body of Christ called the church, things that used
to divide us disappear, as we are all now one in Christ Jesus. Everyone counts, no type of person is higher
or better or more important. I spoke in
that sermon about how this Scripture became the reason I found the courage to
attend seminary, albeit I was provisional, telling myself that if these
Presbyterians were too weird, and their theology too different, I could always
leave. Instead I felt like that ugly
duckling in the story, who finally found her place, and rejoiced.
It was this scripture that the Holy
Spirit used in my heart to make me realize how broad God’s love was, and how it
encompassed the whole of humanity. I
mean, I’d always thought that God came for the world, I just never fleshed out
what that might look like in dealing with different groups of peoples. My home church sent mission workers around
the world so other countries could hear about Jesus; it just never occurred to
me that then they would be my equal.
I grew up in and near Washington DC,
and was there in the time of the Poor People’s campaign, and the angry riots
that tore through town as repressed peoples began to feel their own anger at
the injustices. We got the Washington
Post, and it was on our nightly news, when Martin Luther King Jr was shot, and later the Kennedys. My parents and their
friends were not overtly bigots, they just were okay with treating people
differently if we were nice about it…. I guess my initial application of this
scriptural equality was racism; then later I saw the implications were there
also about genders. My awareness of the
radical extent of the apostle Paul’s vision was gradual; and the verse
continues to be a cornerstone in my theological ponderings.
Hebrews
11:8-9
The story of Abraham and Sarah being
told by God to leave their land and go to a place God would show them is a
story from way, way back in our faith ancestry.
Its what began the whole story of the Jewish people, with God’s covenants
and promises, and deep metaphors of wandering in deserts, holy mountains, ten
commandments, and Promised Land. In the
book of Hebrews, in chapter 11, which we call the “faith chapter,” Abraham and Sarah
start the list of those who showed faith - “By faith Abraham (and Sarah - I
always add her) obeyed when they were called to set out, not knowing where they
were going.” The writer of this letter
to the Hebrews says that this obeying is the essence of faith - they believed
God, and it was counted to them at righteousness. Even thousands of years before Jesus.
One of my early sermons was titled
“To Set Out Not Knowing,” because that phrase captivated me. I imagined Abraham getting his household
ready and leaving his homeland, going out into who knows what, just because God
said to. I mean, I like to know the
destination, and I like maps - or, to be more up-to-date, I like gps and map
apps. I’ve eventually learned to like wandering,
and surprises, and being more laid back, but I was an uptight young person -
control was a big thing. I like plans,
and I like for them to work out.
Usually I had backup plans B and C as well. It frustrated me no end when D or E
happened, and I was not prepared. One of
my favorite lines in the movie Ordinary People was when the therapist says to
the client, “Control is gonna cost you extra.” Like his client, I didn’t like the way life
could change with one phone call from the doctor, a knock on the door at night,
an accident that could change the course of one’s life in a second. I didn’t like the insecurity of feeling that
I was not in charge, that my plans didn’t necessarily work, that things happen
to people. That we can do the right
things, set everything up well, and BOOM - a hurricane blows through and my
security disappears as the illusion it really was.
Because in life, we always “set out
not knowing,” just like Abraham and Sarah.
Who knows at the start of college what is actually going to happen to us
in those 4 years, and the different person we will be afterwards? Who gets married knowing what the years will
bring? Who has kids knowing how its all
going to turn out? We might think we do,
we might make plans and head certain directions, which is good, but they aren’t
ever written in stone.
None of us really
know where our faith journey with God will take us, either. Our assurance has to rest on the continuing
presence of God despite what happens along the way. Our trust has to be that God is with us, and
will see us through. I often try and
picture my 18 year-old self meeting my 65 year-old self….. My 18 year old self
would think I was a heathen, and pray for me with deep concern to get right with God! My early self simply could not imagine the
path God has taken me on.
Well, there are lots more Scriptures I could talk about, and
I could go on at length, but we all want to get to the River Days party…. So I’ll
close with Luke 1:38….
Luke 1:38
Many of my clergywomen colleagues looked into the Bible
for stories about women, and what is told of women in the history of our faith
ancestors. Most of us didn’t know what
to do with the picture of Mary, a woman central to the gospel story of Jesus,
because we’d grown up with a certain view of her in our patriarchal
churches. She was held up as the epitome
of the subservient virgin, the “good” version of being female, versus the, ah
I’ll choose the word 'promiscuous' and 'carnal' version of being female. Girls were exhorted to be like Mary and not
like those pushy feminists who were anti-family and godless. All those negative projections thrown onto a
woman who didn’t fit the subservient and virgin stereotype!
Mary had to be re-examined with my new eyes. I had an additional problem with Mary, as my
upbringing was so virulently anti-Roman Catholic, where we were told people
actually prayed to Mary! and other saints! as if she were God! Clergywomen set out to rework our
understanding of Mary, who had been interpreted to us out of a culture that
wanted to prove its understanding of women as inferior, or who knew their
place.
One Christmas I decided to do a sermon about Mary, and the
verse in Luke 1 changed my perception of her forever - she says to the angel,
“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
Suddenly I saw her deep and true faith, just like Abraham and Sarah’s faith,
that she believed God and simply followed what God asked. No fighting it, no wrestling with it, no
trying to run away from it like the prophet Jonah, no despair over it like the
prophet Elijah…. She simply accepted
what God said, and dealt with the consequences.
Wow. She seemed to summarize what
I see as faith, to simply accept what God says, and live it. Would that I could be as believing of what God says!
There was a parishioner in my WI church named Mary, who was
having babies at about the same time I was.
I confided some of my fears to her, about how I would handle it if my
baby had problems. She answered simply,
“I figure if God gives me that to deal with, then God will also give me the
grace to handle it.” I was silenced; all
my worrying and agitating at not being in control of all this was shown up by
her faith. Who was the minister
here??? Its a foundational trust in God to be
sufficient, to be present, to be for us.
Then while I was actually in labor with my son who was arriving rather
early as far as due dates are concerned, Mary’s presence sat with me - both
Marys. That night I learned why Mary has been so important to women through the ages - I
thought, flippantly, “Mary did this in a barn.”
I thought more seriously, “I wonder if Mary worried that something might
happen to her baby?” Childbirth has always carried risks for both mothers and
babies. I thought about the phrase,
“when her time was fulfilled,” as a description of the onset of labor, and I
thought about seminary profs trying to explain the difference between chronos
time (ie clock & calendar time) and God’s kairos time - ie whenever, when
the time is right…. They should’ve used the illustration of labor and
delivery. I wondered who my firstborn
child would be and what he might do for the world. Probably not a lot of women think about theology
and scriptural words when they’re in labor…, but I bet we all think about these
same issues.
I’ve continued to like this Mary. I’ve learned a lot from her.
Isn’t it interesting how God continues to speak through
Scriptures, and to all parts of our lives?
Isn’t it cool the way God’s Spirit makes these ancient Scriptures live
again in our hearts? These kinds of
interactions with God through the Scriptures, these kinds of realizations and
growths in our human lives - this is something that is available to each of us
as we listen, read, ponder and seek. Its
among the ways God speaks to real life and continues to speak in each
generation. The journey of Christian
faith is full of surprises, turns, illumination, and grace. As I leave you all
here in Indiantown to go minister somewhere else, I leave with you my best
prayers and hopes for a flourishing of your spirits and your life in
Christ. AMEN.
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