12-01-2024 Rev Steven Marsh – Swept Into the Vision of the Future

Series: “Worshipping Our God of Unconditional Love (Together, in a Variety of Ways)”

“Swept Into the Vision of the Future” – Jeremiah 33:14-16, Luke 21:25-36

 

We are loved. And we are to love. We are wired this way by God.

We are created to worship the Triune God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So, longing for love is intricately bound to worship. That’s right, we are encountered by the creator, redeemer, and sustainer of life every day, particularly in our worship. My preferences in worship can get in the way of God. That is, I like liturgy and a freer expression which the two forms of worship we have at Grace express. But I miss the us. Having two different congregational experiences of worship can create two congregations.

Worship brings us face to face with God, the One who loves us the most and knows us the best. Sandra Maria Van Opstal writes, “One of the greatest challenges of our generation is that people make choices based almost exclusively on preferences…They may not understand that worship in community is more about us than about me…Like many of our faith practices (preaching, Scripture study, prayer, and leadership), both biblical principles and cultural preferences are at play.”[1] Yet, we must view our times that we worship together with high value, a blending of the 9 and 11 practices to bless us all as we move into Grace’s new future as a congregation and individual congregants.

I long for love…love from God and others. I long to love…God and others. Let me tell you the story of how Brennan Manning met Jesus.

In 1955, Brennan had a dream. He was a sophomore at the University of Missouri. Brennan’s major was journalism. The New Yorker magazine was planning to employ him following his graduation. Then came the dream.

 

In the dream, Brennan was driving a Cadillac up a steep hill. At the crest of the hill was a fourteen-room ranch-style house with a panoramic view of the valley below. He saw his name on the mailbox. Parked in the driveway were a Lincoln and a Porsche. Barbara was inside the house baking bread and the voices of their four children were in the background. On the wall in the entryway to the house was the Nobel Prize for literature that he was awarded. Brennan awakened from the dream in a cold sweat, shouting, “O God, there’s got to be more!” He began a search for God.

 

Brennan broke off his engagement to Barbara. He announced to his family that he was entering the Franciscan seminary in Loretto, Pennsylvania. Not once in Brennan’s life had he ever uttered the name of Jesus. The seminary was anything but what he thought. The routine was predictable, and the tasks were demeaning, particularly dusting the parlor. One day while dusting, Brennan was staring at an eight-day Swiss clock atop the mantel, covered with a large glass bowl. Father Augustine walked in and asked Brennan what he was doing to which he replied, “I was wondering how much beer that glass bowl would hold.” Brennan knew he needed to leave the seminary. Would Barbara take him back?

Before he could leave, however, Brennan needed to meet with Father Augustine. Prior to that meeting, Brennan visited the fourteen “Stations of the Cross.” At the first station the prayer began with the phrase, “Jesus is condemned to death.” At the twelfth station, the prayer began with the words, “Jesus died on the cross.” He began to pray. After three hours in prayer, and very suddenly, Brennan heard Jesus call his name. For the first time in his life, Brennan felt unconditionally loved. From the depths of his being, Brennan realized that Jesus Christ died on the cross for him. His mind and heart were being called to a personal engagement with God. Brennan realized that there is only Jesus. He is everything.[2]

 

It is true. There is only Jesus! Jesus is everything. It is in Jesus that our longing for love is met. Jeremiah pronounces a future that will come to pass and is already on its way. This “future that will come to pass and is already on its way (33:14-16)” is packaged in between “pronouncements of devastation and restoration set in Jeremiah’s time (33:1-13)” and “emphatic declarations that the Lord will bring about every promise of healing and restoration in an unspecified future (33:17-26).”[3] Luke picks up this theme of a new future. Jesus engages his disciples and the crowds about questions around the end times. That discussion demonstrates that the new future is happening as the disciples and crowds understand that living for Jesus now matters most not when the end of the world was to come. Fred Craddock writes, “The life of disciples, after all is said and done, is not one of speculation or of observation but of behavior and relationships.”[4] The future is now and we are to look to Jesus as the model for how we are to live. Jesus shows us what is right and just. In Jesus we will be saved. In Jesus, our longing for love and to love are met.

We all yearn to experience the unconditional love of God. Today is the official beginning of the Christmas season in the life of the church. It is called Advent. Advent is a time of hope which points people to the new beginning made possible for life in Jesus Christ. Advent serves as a dual reminder of the original expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the nativity of Jesus as well as the second coming of Christ. Advent ties the coming of the Christmas child to the climax of redemptive history with the Second Coming of this “Christmas child.” Oh, for such love as this does the human spirit yearn. Advent brings people together.

From the depths of his being, Brennan Manning realized that Jesus Christ died on the cross for him. His mind and heart were being called to a personal engagement with God. Brennan realized that there is only Jesus. He is everything. I hope you are wrestling with that reality even now. As followers of Jesus, we are sustained by God’s love in Christ. We can bank our hope on the Christmas child, because Jesus makes good on all his promises. Like Brennan Manning, Jesus is calling you by name. You are deeply loved by God. May your love for God increase. May your love for each other and others overflow. Amen!

 

This sermon was preached the First Sunday of Advent on Sunday, 01 December 2024, by the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh in the Great Room and Sanctuary at Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas.

Copyright Ó 2024, Steven M. Marsh, All rights reserved.

 

[1]Sandra Maria Van Opstal The Next Worship: Glorifying God in a Diverse World (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2016), 27.

[2]Adapted from Brennan Manning, Lion and Lamb (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Chosen Books, 1986), 28-34.

[3]Citations taken from L. Daniel Hawk in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery and Cynthia L. Rigby, editors, Connections, Year C, Volume 1 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 2-3.

[4]Fred B. Craddock, Luke (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990), 248.

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11-17-2024 Rev Steven Marsh – Pairing and Pressing

Series: “Jesus’ Message: You Are Integral For Unity Being One Race And One Blood”

“Pairing and Pressing” – 1 Samuel 1:4-20, Mark 13:1-8

Jesus says, “Beware that no one leads you astray.” Much to think about friends.

To whom do you look for guidance and wisdom in your life? To whom do you pair yourself and press forward?

Yesterday, I had a discussion with our son, Rob, about life. Rob is very successful. He is the youngest Associate Director at 34 years old with the Boston Consulting Group. Yes, Rob is up for promotion. We discussed career advancement, the salary, bonus structure, and medical care.

Rebecca and Rob’s daughter, Blake, was born in August 2023. God gifted Rebecca and Rob their beautiful daughter through invitro fertilization. Janet and are so grateful that they are in a state that would allow such a pregnancy. And they were able to harvest two other viable eggs. Rob is an amazing young man. Yes, he is wrestling with career advancement and his desire to be a responsible and loving dad to Blake and husband to Rebecca. At the end of our conversation, Rob called me wise. I wept.

Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert in their book When Helping Hurts share the following story:

One Sunday I was visiting one of Africa’s largest slums, the massive Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. The conditions were simply inhumane. People lived in shacks constructed out of cardboard boxes. Foul smells gushed out of open ditches carrying human and animal excrement …. I thought to myself, This place is completely God-forsaken. Then to my amazement, right there among the dung, I heard the sound of a familiar hymn …. Every Sunday, thirty slum dwellers crammed into this ten-by-twenty foot “sanctuary” to worship [God]. The church was made out of cardboard boxes that had been opened up and stapled to studs. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a church made up of some of the poorest people on earth. I was immediately asked to preach the sermon. I quickly jotted down some notes and was looking forward to teaching this congregation [about the sovereignty of God]. But before the sermon began, I listened as some of the poorest people on the planet cried out to God: “Jehovah Jireh, please heal my son, as he is going blind.” “Merciful Lord, please protect me when I go home today, for my husband always beats me.” “Sovereign King, please provide my children with enough food today, as they are hungry.” As I listened to their heartfelt prayers, I thought about my ample salary, my life insurance policy, my health insurance policy, my two cars, my house, etc. I realized that I do not really trust in God’s sovereignty on a daily basis. What I have buffers me, shields me from most economic shocks. I realized that when these folks pray “Give us this day our daily bread” their minds don’t wander as mine so often does. I realized that these slum dwellers were trusting in God’s sovereignty just to get them through the day, and they had a far deeper intimacy with God than I probably will ever have in my entire life.[1]

 

Confrontation with the basic necessities of life brings the point home that our simple need for the basics is enough to compel gratitude for what we do have and a rejection of the complexities of life that consume our lives.

1 Samuel 1:4-20 addresses the joy of a life well lived with giving of oneself as the centerpiece. Each one of us carries the purpose and nature of God throughout life. Each encounter we have, every person we meet, gives us the opportunity, through our “giving,” to be or receive “…that mystical, hopeful, riveting, and terrifying catalyst that fuels the ongoing story of God.”[2] Hannah pursued understanding her barrenness. Her petition of God to give her a son never ceased. The circumstances of how our births and families of origin came about are as different and varied as each of our interests. Such is the case of Samuel. Hannah named her son, Samuel, from the root word “to ask.” God answered Hannah’s prayers Hannah’s prayer is much like Mary’s in that both are praying in confidence that God will end oppression and raise up the poor. Barrenness is a profound issue in Scripture. We cannot make a universal application to a miracle by God. Science has a lot to say.

In the Gospel of Mark, Mark provides a picture of the significance of our existence in the moment. Life as we know it will not remain forever. The things, institutions, and people that we cherish will not last forever. The end times have always been and so has our preoccupation with knowing when. The end of the kingdom of this world is inevitable and the new kingdom will come. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Things we think will last forever do not. I remember the Northridge Earthquake of 1994, September 11, 2001, and when the sky darkened, and a tornado devastated the community of Moore, Oklahoma in May 2013.[3]

Our life’s purpose is quite simple: to witness to the good news of the gospel, so people do not take hope in things that most certainly will be destroyed. Because of Jesus, all that we are and do in the home, retirement, office, school, neighborhood, church, and leisure, can be done with a sense of urgency in that it matters. Interactions with others can model God’s work of redemption. Our lives, the way we live in God’s purpose of loving God and others, is how we participate as best neighbors in God’s mission.

Daily living is not an end in itself, it is a means. Both God and human give of themselves for the sake of meaning to be experienced in life. As Christians, we see our lives as existing for the sake of others. Mike Slaughter in The Christian Wallet writes, “We form and grow relationships in the margins of our lives. It is also within those margins that we do acts of kindness or service toward others. Most critically, it is in the margins that we build our right relationship with God.”[4] Bearing one another’s burdens and taking responsibility for the day’s toil and cares is the call of being a follower of Jesus.

Radical dependence of the entire creation upon God is what is needed in the human experience today. Think about it. Life is a tangle of relationships. We all desire to receive comfort in our grief and to give comfort to the grieving. I concur with Richard J. Foster, the author of Freedom of Simplicity, “We have no independent existence, no self-sustaining ability. All we are and all we possess is derived.”[5] We must re-think and re-gift years of being conditioned to live for ourselves.

Enduring persistence in our dependence on God is a spiritual discipline. Pair yourself with God and others. Press forward with purpose. Experience the call of following Jesus. Amen.

This sermon was preached the Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost on Sunday, 17 November 2024

by the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh in the Great Room and Sanctuary

at Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas 

Copyright Ó 2024

Steven M. Marsh

All rights reserved.

[1]Adapted from Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts (Moody Press, 2012), 64-65.

[2]G. Malcolm Sinclair in David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 295.

[3]In the two paragraphs of textual analysis above, I have benefited from the thinking of Patricia K. Tull, Jared E. Alcantara, Leigh Campbell Taylor, Oliver Larry Yarbrough, Pablo A. Jimenez, Gilberto A. Ruiz, and Theodore J. Wardlaw in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby and Carolyn J. Sharp, editors, Connections, Year B, Volume 3 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2021), 439-442, 442-443, 444-446, 447-448, 449-450, 451-453, and 453-455.

[4]Mike Slaughter, The Christian Wallet (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 198.

[5]Richard J. Foster, Freedom of Simplicity (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1981), 16.

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10-20-2024 Rev Steven Marsh – Crushed and Waiting

Series: “Jesus’ Message: You Are Integral For Unity Being One Race And One Blood” – “Crushed and Waiting” : Job 38:1-7 and Mark 10:35-45

 

Grace Presbyterian Church aspires to make fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ who are remembering, telling, and living the way of Jesus. Today’s Bible readings remind us that God enters our real-life circumstances and experiences. And some of those circumstances and experiences crush us and leave us waiting for rebuilding to begin.

Jesus teaches that living as a servant-leader is the key to a life that matters. And, how we live as a servant leader in those crushing and waiting circumstances and experiences is important. Let me tell you the story of Rudy:

Rudy is the true story of a young overachiever and his tenacious pursuit of his dream to attend the University of Notre Dame and play football for the Fighting Irish. However, the road leading to his goal was filled with obstacles. First, because he was small and had barely average speed, there was little chance he would be able to make the Irish’s football squad as a walk-on. Second, Rudy was dyslexic, and his high school grades had suffered as a consequence. It would be almost impossible for him to be accepted by the prestigious university in the first place. Refusing to give up, he took a Greyhound into South Bend and met Father Cavanaugh, a scholastic priest who agreed to get him into a semester of Holy Cross Junior College. If his grades were good enough there, perhaps Notre Dame might consider letting him in…. Rudy’s grades…. improved dramatically. But three semesters and three rejection letters later, he is devastated and hopeless. His next semester is his last chance, because Notre Dame never allows seniors to transfer. He…. managed his way to South Bend, labored in class, and even scraped up enough odd jobs so he can [could] eat. He has been diligent and worked every angle he knew. But it hasn’t been enough. Rudy finds himself in the chapel where he had first met Father Cavanaugh. And once again, he pours out his soul to the elderly priest. “Maybe I haven’t prayed enough,” Rudy says, almost frantic. Father Cavanaugh answers with kind, narrow eyes, “I’m sure that’s not the problem. Praying is something we do in our time. The answers come in God’s time.” Rudy isn’t satisfied. There has to be something else he can do. “Have I done everything I possibly can? Can you help me?” Father Cavanaugh’s answer is measured but sure. “Son, in 35 years of religious studies, I’ve come up with only two hard, incontrovertible facts: There is a God, and I’m not Him.”[1]

 

Rudy was pursuing something that mattered, playing football at Notre Dame. What mattered most, from Father Cavanaugh’s perspective, was Rudy to deepen his sense of belonging to God.

Succeeding and resting in the truth that you belong to God and know who you are in Christ matters most. In this regard, Bobby Schuller in Change Your Thoughts Change Your World writes, “Bonding is my greatest need. There are people in my life who love me and want to know me better.” [2] The Old Testament and Gospel Readings remind us that participating in God’s mission through service, building personal and intimate relationships with God and others, is how we grow as followers of Jesus.

Job 38:1-7

 

Job 38 demonstrates that we have no understanding of God knowing each one of us from the laying of the foundation of the world. Job has characterized God’s creative purpose as a design of darkness. Job lacks understanding. But he truly wants to know why this persecution is happening to him. Job has distorted God’s creative intent in his argument with God. Job 38:4 reads, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.”

Mark 10:35-45

 

Mark 10 exhorts the community of faith to be selfless and grasp the meaning of the prediction of Jesus’ death. Jesus knows what’s ahead for his ministry and life. He doesn’t fully understand but knows the outcome. There is a profound lesson for the disciples. It’s not about who sits on the left and right side of Jesus, but an invitation to enter the known and unknown of the path of Jesus. Disciples then and now must enter into that known and unknown path of being a follower of Jesus Christ. James and John behaved exactly how we do. Mark 10:43-44 reads, “…. but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”[3]

Leaving everything, following Jesus, serving others, and being a slave to all would appear not to be a great marketing strategy. However, Jesus attracted twelve initial disciples and by the time of Pentecost thousands and thousands and thousands of new disciples were following Jesus with what appeared to be a flawed marketing plan.

James and John expected Jesus to do whatever asked of him, like who is the greatest and which one got to sit on the right or left side of Jesus. They wanted a special place in Jesus’ coming kingdom. They didn’t understand surrendering their wants in order to attain God’s. James and John struggled accepting the life God was giving them and wanted a life they were creating in their minds and hearts. They struggled with understanding the gospel, the good news, as a message of giving oneself up through service for the sake of others.

God does not abandon the faithful.[4] It’s not equal giving, but equal sacrifice. Leveraged giving spends your intellectual, emotional, spiritual, financial, physical, and time capital, sacrificially. Sacrificial and responsible giving makes the community stronger.

My friends, dependency on God combines God’s action and human action into experiencing the kingdom of God. Depend on God as you ponder your 2025 Pledge of Time and Treasure and a gift to replenish our cash reserves. Believe that dependence on God will lead you to obedient and sacrificial behavior in the volunteering and financial aspects of your Christian discipleship.

Grace Presbyterian Church exists to demonstrate and offer others a better way to live. Jesus says, “…whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave to all.” Leverage your giving by spending your intellectual, emotional, spiritual, financial, physical, and time capital, sacrificially, particularly in those crushing and waiting times. Amen.

 

This sermon was preached the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost on Sunday, 20 October 2024

by the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh in the Great Room and  Sanctuary at

Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas

 

Copyright Ó 2024

Steven M. Marsh

All rights reserved.

 

[1]The source is the film Rudy (Tristar, 1993), directed by David Anspaugh. Found October 12, 2021, on preachingtoday.com.

[2]Bobby Schuller, Change Your Thoughts Change Your World (Nashville, Tennessee: Nelson Books, 2019), 191.

[3]In the four paragraphs of textual analysis above, I have benefited from the thinking of Brady Banks, Jennifer T. Kaalund, George R. Hunsberger, Alicia D. Myers, and Nontombi Naomi Tutu in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby and Carolyn J. Sharp, editors, Connections, Year B, Volume 3 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2021), 389-394, 398-400, 400-401, 402-404, and 404-406.

[4]This insight is gleaned from Kathleen Bostrom in David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 154.

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10-13-2024 Rev Steven Marsh – Do Not Succeed At Something That Doesn’t Matter

Series: “Jesus’ Message: You Are Integral For Unity Being One Race And One Blood”

“Do Not Succeed At Something That Doesn’t Matter” –  Job 23:1-9, 16-17, Mark 10:17-31

 

Grace Presbyterian Church aspires to make fully-devoted followers of Jesus Christ who are remembering, telling, and living the way of Jesus. Today’s Bible readings remind us that God enters our real-life circumstances and experiences.

Malcolm Gladwell published Revenge of the Tipping Point this month. Gladwell writes, “The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea,” I began, “and the idea is very simple.”[1] Historically, the tipping point idea of solving financial problems by robbing banks was made famous by celebrity bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, and “Pretty Boy” Floyd. Gladwell writes,

In 1965, a total of 847 banks were robbed across the entire United States—a modest number, given the size of the country…In the early afternoon of November 29, 1983, the Los Angeles field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation received a call from a Bank of America branch in the Melrose District. The call was taken by Linda Webster…The suspect was a young white male wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap. Slender. Polite. Southern accent. Well dressed. He said please and thank you. Webster turned to her colleague, William Rehder, who ran the FBI’s local bank robbery division. “Bill, it’s the Yankee.” The Yankee Bandit had been active in Los Angeles since July of that year.[2]

The Yankee robbed one bank after another and on the afternoon of November 29th, he hit six banks in four hours. An idea of dealing with financial problems by robbing banks was implemented by thugs until the Yankee arrived on the scene. The Yankee was a class act.

And so, we face a tipping point in our approach to the 2024 Operating Budget and the 2024 Generosity Campaign for the 2025 Operating Budget. Finances, a social epidemic for institutions, individuals, families, and churches, are at a tipping point. At last Sunday’s Town Hall Meeting, we learned that Grace, like many mainline churches, is confronted with the chaos of the hurricanes of societal and cultural change.

Job 23:1-9, 16-17

Job 23 demonstrates we know that the question “Where is God” is answered by the church’s historic answer, “God is here.”[3] In the preceding speech to Job by Eliphaz, Eliphaz accuses Job of wickedness particularly in depriving others of clothing, water, food, and land. Eliphaz also blames Job for his own suffering. Job’s response was a clear argument with God about being elusive and absent. Job wants to present his case of innocence to God. He wants to learn and understand God’s reasoning. Job believes that God is hiding.[4]

Mark 10:17-31

Mark 10 exhorts the community of faith to be selfless. Jesus taught the man who approached him and teaches us that sacrificial living is God’s way. The point of the story of the rich man and the disciples is the relationship between discipleship and riches. Jesus states five imperatives to the rich man in the earshot of the disciples to go, sell, give, come, and follow. These five imperatives make one solid and seamless command with a promise inserted, between go, sell, and give and come and follow, “you will have treasure in heaven.” No matter how we might spiritualize this text, that is not to take it more literally as a lifetime journey, all disciples are implicated on what we do with wealth.[5]

God does not abandon the faithful.[6] Leveraged giving spends your intellectual, emotional, spiritual, financial, physical, and time capital, sacrificially. Sacrificial and responsible giving makes the community stronger. Mike Slaughter in The Christian Wallet writes, “Responsible investing means taking all that God has placed into our hands and fully deploying it in every sense of the word toward God’s preferred future picture—both for our own lives and for the lives of others. Investing in tomorrow also requires a simultaneous trust in God’s provision for both today and tomorrow.”[7] Leveraged giving spends your intellectual, emotional, spiritual, financial, physical, and time capital, sacrificially. It is responsible investing.

Dependency on God combines God’s action and human action into experiencing the kingdom of God. According to Barna Research, U.S. teens and adults have reported that, while they have mostly positive opinions of Jesus, their perceptions of the Church and Christians as a whole have often led them to doubt Christian beliefs. Other data Barna studies shows that the Church’s reputation in specific areas like pursuing justice and stepping up to help solve local problems is wavering among both teens and adults alike. It appears that most Christians (57%), including over seven in 10 practicing Christians (76%), are at a point in their spiritual journeys where they want to help the Church refocus on what’s truly important. Christians want to help the church realign with Jesus’ priorities.[8]

What are Jesus’ priorities? Micah 6:8 reads, “He (God) has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Might Grace rethink and organize a different way of being church when it comes to growth in membership? What about providing seminars at Grace on parenting, legal documents such as a Living Trust, Will, Power of Attorney, Medical Power of Attorney, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and living on a budget? How about Parent’s Night Out for parents in our children’s ministry as well as the parents of children in the neighborhoods of College Hill and Crown Heights? As it is the case in Kirk’s youth ministry, could we as a congregation and congregants develop a heart for reaching the unchurched and sharing the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed?

Depend on God as you ponder your 2025 Pledge of Time and Treasure and a gift to replenish our cash reserves. Believe that dependence on God will lead you to obedient and sacrificial behavior in the volunteering and financial aspect of your Christian discipleship. Remember the tipping point is the unfolding of an idea that develops behaviors of transformation. As Gladwell writes so eloquently, “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.[9]

Your life is designed by God to be a wallet. As we read the Bible, we discover that God has given us prescription glasses enabling us to see more clearly the way of leveraging our giving from our life wallet. John Calvin refers to the Scriptures as spectacles for weak, failing eyes.[10]

Grace Presbyterian Church exists to demonstrate and offer others a better way to live. We do that by leveraging our giving. Jesus says, go, sell, give, come, and follow. Leverage your giving by spending your intellectual, emotional, spiritual, financial, physical, and time capital, sacrificially. Amen.

 

This sermon was preached the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost on Sunday, 13 October 2024

by the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh in the Great Room and  Sanctuary at

Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas

Copyright Ó 2024

Steven M. Marsh

All rights reserved.

[1]Malcolm Gladwell, Revenge of the Tipping Point (New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2024), ix.

[2]Malcolm Gladwell, Revenge of the Tipping Point, ix, 13, 15.

[3]My thanks to Thomas Edward Frank in David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4 (Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 146, 148, and 150.

[4]In this paragraph of textual analysis, I have benefited from the thinking of Mark McEntire, Wyndy Corbin Reuschling, Anna George Traynham, Zaida Maldonado Perez, William Yoo, Matthew L. Skinner and Richard W. Voelz in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby and Carolyn J. Sharp, editors, Connections, Year B, Volume 3 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2020), 127-129, 129-131, 132-134, 135-137, 137-139, 140-142 and 142-143.

[5]Adapted from Lamar Williamson, Jr., Interpretation Commentary, Mark (Louisville, Kentucky, John Knox Press, 1983), 182-188.

[6]This insight is gleaned from Kathleen Bostrom in David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 154.

[7]Mike Slaughter, The Christian Wallet (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 128.

[8]Adapted from Barna’s State of the Church Initiative, 2024.

[9]Malcolm Gladwell, Revenge of the Tipping Point, ix.

[10]For the analogy of spectacles for weak eyes see John Calvin in Book I, Chapter VI of Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1, translated by Ford Lewis Battles and edited by John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 69-74.

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10-06-2024 Rev Steven Marsh – Take Courage and Do Not Worry

Series: “Jesus’ Message: You Are Integral For Unity Being One Race And One Blood”

“Take Courage and Do Not Worry” – Job 1:1; 2:1-10

Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12, Mark 10: 2-16 (13-16)

Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite authors. Twenty-five years ago, Gladwell published The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference. This month he published Revenge of the Tipping Point. Gladwell writes, “The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea,” I began, “and the idea is very simple.”[1]

It is that best way to understand the emergence of fashion trends, the ebb and flow of crime waves, or, for that matter, the transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth, or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.[2]

Ideas and behaviors follow strange pathways in Wichita, Sedgwick County, Kansas, The United States of America, and the world.

And so, we face a tipping point in our approach to the 2024 Operating Budget and the 2024Generosity Campaign for the 2025 Operating Budget. Finances, a social epidemic for institutions, individuals, families, and churches are at a tipping point. Listen to our sibling in Christ and Trustee Tom Rhoads. Tom…

Jesus teaches that healthy change occurs from a base of child-like dependence on God. To make any relationship work obstacles need to be embraced as opportunities for making things better. For Christians, having a child-like dependence on God is the best approach. In this regard, Bobby Schuller in Change Your Thoughts Change Your World writes, “When we face setbacks in life, our temptation will be to curse them, dwell on self-pity, blame others, or hurry on to something that isn’t meant to be…. There is no tragedy [setback] God can’t redeem. Though you cannot see it now, God will get you through whatever it is you’re facing, and you might even find a gift within.”[3] Believe that God is with you. Believe that God will see you through to a better outcome. Therein lies the significance of thinking and self-examination: Learn. Evaluate. Plan. Dream. Get back up after a fall. Press through the pain.[4] See obstacles, things that are in the way, as opportunities to grow. The Old Testament and Gospel Readings remind us that obstacles emerge for all people that can become opportunities for growth as a person. Satan tells God that Job only loves God for the things God does for him.

Job 1:1, 12 reads, There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil….The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not stretch out your hand against him!” So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. And Mark 10:15 reads, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” Remember, everything works for good for those who love Jesus, who place child-like dependance on God.

The Pharisees often attempted to trap Jesus over his abandonment of traditional thought and practice in Judaism. And Job teaches us to ask hard questions of God and patiently listen for the answers as an act of depending on God and being faithful to God.[5]

And so here we are experiencing a tipping point. Yes, the financial woes facing Grace Presbyterian Church are staggering, in fact insurmountable. Yes, insurmountable when we try to muster up our strength to solve them. But here is the tipping point. Jesus states that a child-like dependency on God combines God’s action and human action into experiencing the kingdom of God. To trust that God will lead each one of us to sacrifice by increasing our pledge in 2025 and make a sacrificial gift to replenish our cash reserves….is embracing the tipping point idea and its corresponding solution, behavior of sacrificial giving.

Depend on God as you ponder your 2025 Pledge and a gift to replenish our cash reserves. Be that dependent child believing that dependence on God will lead you to obedient and sacrificial behavior in the financial aspect of your Christian discipleship. Remember the tipping point is the unfolding of an idea that develops behaviors of transformation. As Gladwell writes so eloquently, “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.[6]

See God work things out to a good and kingdom end in the obedience and sacrifice of following Jesus in your financial giving. Take courage and do not worry. Amen.

This sermon was preached the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost on Sunday, 6 October 2024

by the Rev. Dr. Steven M. Marsh in the Sanctuary at Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas

Copyright 2024

Steven M. Marsh

All rights reserved.

[1]Malcolm Gladwell, Revenge of the Tipping Point (New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2024), ix.

[2]Ibid.

[3]Bobby Schuller, Change Your Thoughts Change Your World (Nashville, Tennessee: Nelson Books, 2019), 147.

[4]Adapted from Bobby Schuller, Change Your Thoughts Change Your World, 33.

[5]In the two paragraphs of textual analysis above, I have benefited from the thinking of Rebecca Abts Wright, Jill Duffield, Kimberly Bracken Long, Osvaldo D. Vena, Michael Lodahl, Leticia A. Guardiola-Saenz, and Peter J. Paris in Joel B. Green, Thomas G. Long, Luke A. Powery, Cynthia L. Rigby and Carolyn J. Sharp, editors, Connections, Year B, Volume 3 (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2021), 353-356, 356-358, 359-361, 362-364, 364-366, 367-369 and 369-371.

[6]Malcolm Gladwell, Revenge of the Tipping Point, ix.

 

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