Prayer for the Bahamas at the Fort Lauderdale Interfaith Service, September 4, 2019

Posted on September 5, 2019 by patrick h wrisley

Psalm 133

1 How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!
2 It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe.
3 It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.

Last evening, an interfaith community of religious leaders came together in unity of purpose for our prayers for those impacted by Hurricane Dorian.  Presbyterian, Baptist, Episcopalian, non-

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denominational, Hindi and Muslim leaders gathered at the Sanctuary Church in Fort Lauderdale for a service of worship and prayer. It was a beautiful example of how God’s people can and should live together in unity.  All the leaders spoke a few words and then offered prayers.  Below is the prayer I offered.

God of all tender mercies, we gather tonight as one people, created in your image, sharing the corporate sense of loss and pain for those who have suffered and are suffering from this apocalyptic storm.

We weave our prayers together from each of our faith traditions knowing full well that Abba, Yahweh, Allah – One God – hear all His children’s prayers.

We cannot imagine the horror of drowning in a submerged attic, seeing our spouse or child slip below the waves at the crest of a surge, or having our homes blown down around us; our hearts cannot fathom what those rescuers and other personnel searching for the lost or dead are witnessing or feeling, and we are left speechless.

Almighty One, in a world where there is such division, we come in the unity of Spirit and purpose to help one another grieve, share the best we have, and show the world the beauty of our diversity as we are woven into a singular rope of grace and encouragement for the broken.

We lift up those who have lost their lives in the storm and commit them to your loving care and embrace.

We implore you to care for the survivors and help them grieve and process the trauma they have endured; may the world reach out in kindness, and supply the people of the island water, medicine, food, and necessities for humane living and survival.

Provide the means by which these life necessities will be transported in a timely way that will not be hindered by political bickering or power plays as our governments have done during other moments of crisis and devastation.

Specifically, we pray for the children…

…rescuers and first responders,

…boat captains, helicopter and airplane pilots delivering supplies,

…the aged and frail,

…the islands’ religious leaders and their hope, courage, and strength,

…doctors and nurses attending to the wounded and sick,

…for families awaiting word to hear if their loved ones are still alive.

Forgive our feckless attitude toward our neighbor and our environment and restore us once again to your side. God of Abraham and Joseph, hear our prayers…Amen.

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Imitating Jesus. Some Thoughts on Humility; Luke 14.1, 7-14

Posted on September 4, 2019 by patrick h wrisley

Sermon:        Imitating Jesus. Some Thoughts on Humility.
Scripture:      Luke 14:1, 7-14
Preacher:      Patrick H. Wrisley, D.Min.
Location:       First Presbyterian Church Fort Lauderdale
Date:              September 1, 2019

Here’s a riddle for you.  What is the one thing you can strive for but once you have it you immediately lose it?

Humility.

So, let me ask you: Are you a humble person? Think about it before you say anything! Hold that thought right here for just a moment and let’s turn to our biblical text.

Our scripture today from Luke has Jesus attending a dinner party at a Pharisee’s home.  Pharisees, if you remember, are religious scholars of the first century and knew the religious rule book backward and forwards. They were considered to be part of what we might describe as “the movers and shakers” of their world.  They dressed impressively, their table manners were impeccable, and they wielded a good amount of influence in their Jewish communities. Our Story is picking up towards the beginning of supper.  Listen to the Word of the Lord from Luke 14:1, 7-14.

Luke 14:1, 7-14

14.1On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were watching him closely…

7When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. 8“When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; 9and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. 10But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 11For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” 12He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. 13But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”[1]

Jesus’ words seem to be giving proverbial advice when it comes to going out to dinner. He then follows that with a second parable which serves to bring out the importance, it brings out the flavors of the proverbial wisdom he has just shared; in fact, the second parable ensures that we don’t just hear Jesus’ words as merely good advice while dining out.  Today, Jesus is lifting up for us how we are to live together in community and how we are to be in relationship with one another. Ultimately, Jesus is foretelling what he himself will do for the community, literally for the whole cosmos, come time for the Jewish Passover.  Our Story is Jesus telling us, “Imitate me.”

How are we to imitate Jesus?  Well, Jesus says we imitate him when we change our perspective and point of view.  He is inviting you and me to look at life through the eyes and ears of those who are seated by the restaurant’s kitchen door, you know the least desirable seat in the place! Have you ever sat by the kitchen door of a busy restaurant?  It is not the most sought-after seat in the place!  It’s the least desirable because it’s often loud.  You not only hear the conversations of people in the restaurant, but you hear the banter between the servers and the cooks, too!  They’re yelling at each other to get the orders out on time.  They’re bickering about how the customer wants her fish cooked.  You hear the busboys slinging dirty dishes as they clang and slap against each other. You can overhear the wait staff gossiping about that jerky customer at Table 16 and what they want to do with his food.

But your perspective also changes with what you can see. It becomes obvious from the table by the kitchen door to see which customers are getting better service. You note how the server at the prep station drops a few lemon wedges from her bowl onto the floor and how she quickly scoops them up and places them back with the others to be served. You see the waiter take his forearm as he sniffs his nose down the length of his arm.  Since you are sitting in a loud and distracting seat, you cannot really talk with the one you’re with, so you end up watching other customers and diners.  Who is talking to whom?  Is that couple in a fight? Who is that sole woman dining alone and why does she look so sad?  It’s all about perspective.

Sit at the best table in the house and you have beautiful views, quiet conversations, and doting staff service.  The Manager usually comes by and checks on you. Other customers watch the staff fawn over you and your party and build up in their mind how special you must be or how important you are.

Jesus is inviting you and me to change our seat in the restaurant, to switch seats at the dinner table, thereby changing our perspective and how we look at and hear the world.  When the person accustomed to sitting at the best seat at the table or restaurant is asked to sit by the kitchen, he or she will relinquish their place of privilege and see and hear their surroundings from the place of servitude and from the margins. Your perspective of the wait staff changes as you see her battling the other servers for her order or hear the chef is screaming at her only to have the customer at Table 7 loudly chew her out because the order is not right.  When you change your perspective, you discover a sense of empathy for the others in the room.  Your outlook on the restaurant might even change as you observe the management relate with the staff. Frankly, when you are seated at the worst table in the place and are by the kitchen, it teaches you how to be a better, more kind and appreciative diner.

At least it can.

Beloved, Jesus wants us to change seats because he knows it will change our perspective from what we are accustomed to a perspective of the ways things truly are. He is asking us to voluntarily give up our places of privilege and assume the posture and position of the lowly, overlooked ones on society’s margins.  He is asking us to put ourselves into their places, to spend time walking in their shoes, in order to gain the perspective of how the non-privileged live and how they are treated.

At least it can.

Isn’t this the core of what humility is about, to begin with? Humility is all about one’s purposeful changing of one’s perspective from that of privilege to the standpoint of being powerlessness and need. It means giving up self-importance in order to experience the impotence of power many in our world experience daily.  It means intentionally positioning oneself to view the world from a position of “I am blessed” to that of being “I am deserving.” It means learning to live with what we have versus what we think we are entitled to possessing.

At least it can.

Humility is not a quality we are to strive for (that’s an oxymoron in its own right!) but humility is a heart-held virtue from which we are to live out our life. It describes more of who we are at the core of our spiritual lives as opposed to how we act.  Humble acts emerge from humbly-lived lives.  It’s the position of looking out for “the other” and trying to understand their dreams, their longings, their hurts, and their sorrows. And then something happens when we do.

You see, when our perspective changes, so too do the way we respond to those around us. When we look at others and the world from the position of being down low like they are, we feel their isolation, their discrimination, their sense of being forgotten at the back of the line. What we see in our lives impacts how we feel and relate to those in our lives. Our hearts and the embraces our arms can contain grow more caring and larger and more encompassing. Perspective changes behavior and how we relate with others.

At least it can.

Jesus is calling us to imitate his own humbleness.  We read in Philippians 2 how Jesus gave up the form of being God in order to become a human being.  Thus, God changing God’s own perspective enabled the Lord to see and experience our humanity, our world, in ways God never had before. It is out of God’s humbleness that His love through Christ was lived out for you and for me. God the Almighty, housed in eternal timelessness changed His perspective by entering our earthly time-bound fleshy existence to experience humanity, to experience our life in a way God never had before!

Our English word for humility derives from the Latin word “humus”, literally the black and brown dirt of the ground comprised of the composted dead leaves, plants and animals of the soil which provide nutrients for other forms of life.  Humus is the compost of the soil which brings nutrients to other items planted in the ground so life can take seed, take form, and express itself in a new creation.  This is what Jesus did for us, isn’t it? The compost, the humus, of Good Friday brought us new life and growth at Easter didn’t it?

And here is the news flash: Jesus desires our lives to be the humus, the compost through which the Kingdom of God can be planted in the here and now in our broken and hurting world.  As Jesus gave his life for us, we are called to give up our seats of honor, our lives, and become the source of nutrients for others as they discover the winsome life with Jesus as well.  And we do this by imitating Jesus; we do this in and through our humility.

The Spirit add understanding to these feeble words. Amen.

Patrick H. Wrisley, D.Min.
Senior Pastor & Teaching Elder
First Presbyterian Church
401 SE 15th Avenue
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
pwrisley@drew.edu
patrickhwrisley.net

© 2019 Patrick H. Wrisley. Sermon manuscripts are available for the edification of members and friends of First Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida and may not be altered, re-purposed, published or preached without permission.   All rights reserved.

[1] The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Reclaiming the Sabbath!, Luke 13:10-17

Posted on August 26, 2019 by patrick h wrisley
Schwarz_JesusBentWomanPainting better color (1000x750)

Barbara Schwarz, OP, “Jesus and the Bent Over Woman,” acrylic on canvas, 2014.

Sermon:        Reclaiming the Sabbath
Scripture:     Luke 13:10-17
Preacher:      Patrick H. Wrisley, D.Min.
Location:      First Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Date:             August 25, 2019

When pressed this week for a sermon title to print this week, I coughed up, “Churches in America are Operating Under a New Set of Blue Laws.”  I really didn’t like that title for this message and the more I got into the text, the more it just didn’t fit.  So away with that title!  Today, my sermon title is built around these three words: Reclaiming the Sabbath.

Turn in your Bible to Luke 13.10-17. Our Story is placed in a Jewish synagogue and Jesus is teaching. In his day, the “preachers” sat down in front of the crowds to teach their message and we can imagine Jesus sitting down and begin his discussion on some aspect of the Torah, the Jewish Law. As you hear our text, I invite you to join Jesus in that synagogue and take in the sights, sounds and smells of what is around you. In particular, listen to the characters in our Story and imagine what they must have looked like, seen, and felt throughout this exchange.  Put on a pair of “Jewish ears” and see if you can pick up those words that for a Jewish person are a part of their cultural warp and weft. Listen to the Word of the Lord!

Luke 13:10-17

10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11 And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14 But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” 15 But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” 17 When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.[1]

Who is in our Story? There’s obviously Jesus. There is the synagogue leader who is charged with making sure everything is run decently and in order. There is the sick woman and then there is the crowd of Jewish worshippers who had packed the synagogue that Saturday. So, let’s begin our musings this morning by asking our self, “Which character do I most relate within today’s Story?”

Let’s assume none of us sees him or herself as Jesus in our text…that would be a bit presumptuous on our parts. So, who are you?  Are you the sick woman who has been literally bent over in pain for nearly two decades and has been silently stereotyped by the community as a sinner because of your ailment, unclean and a virtual nobody in the village? Your body does not allow you to look up into the sky or into the face of the person who is speaking with you. Your world is a world spent looking at people’s feet! You have to turn your body side-to-side in order to take in your surroundings. Your move slowly and have to shuffle your feet forward to get anywhere and are easily jostled about by those who are hurrying by you. You feel alone and isolated as who wants to be around a broken old woman with a deformity who doesn’t fit into her community in a way the community appreciates.

Perhaps you relate with the synagogue ruler who is all concerned with protocol and doing things the right way.  You subscribe to the notion of, “It’s worked this way for my grandparents, parents, and now for me and my family, so it’s good enough for people like you today! This is the way we have always done it so don’t rock the boat and deviate from what we’re already doing!” The synagogue ruler enjoys the predictable status quo and the easy power that flows from it. He thinks, “I know the rules. I follow the rules. I will make sure you follow the rules too!”

Then again, maybe you are one of the worshipers who happen to be there that day. You go “to church” that day expecting the same-old, same-old but this new preacher is stirring the pudding. On one hand, you’re tempted to revert to the old “We’ve never done it that before” but on the other hand, you realize there is something refreshingly different in how this teacher/preacher Jesus is presenting his case. You kind of like seeing the stuffy old guard of leadership stirred up a bit and have their myopic points of view challenged and enlarged.

So, beloved, who are you in the Story? How do you personally react to the events of what is unfolding in front of you? Yet, it’s not just about who we relate to in our text; it’s about discerning what the major point of our text is and what is the foil, what is the light that shines on the main point of our Story. Is the Story about the healed woman? Is the Story about Jesus being a rabble-rouser? Is the Story about following religious rules and expectations? Or, is our Story about something else entirely? Although our text talks about a crippled woman who is healed, we realize her healing is really the foil, the light, that shines on the key part of our teaching which is what are we to do about our understanding the Sabbath day.

For the crippled woman, Sabbath was the day to come and truly be in the community as an equal worshipper before the presence of God. For the synagogue ruler, it was time for ensuring proper decorum was adhered to while the community gathered to learn about God. For the crowds, it was a day to fulfill all righteousness as a good Jew and meet at the synagogue for learning and praying; it was what doing what good God-fearing Jews were expected to do. For Jesus, however, the Sabbath had grown dank and stale. For Jesus, the Sabbath was majoring in the minors of life and neglecting the weightier, more profound issues of life.  For Jesus, the Sabbath was about learning and prayer…for sure…but Sabbath was primarily a day when the chosen people were to learn, be reminded and experience God’s gracious and grace-full provision and liberation from a hamster-wheel-type life.  Somehow, that very important reality was lost somewhere and the Sabbath became more about “the rules” and obligations you as a good Jew were to fulfill than it was a time to expectantly encounter God in order to be transformed and to be loved with wells of grace that are deeper than we can plumb!

We see this today in churches across America. For some, coming to Sunday worship is a time when those who are isolated feel they can come and be with others like them whether or not they are even noticed themselves!  For some, church services and routines are expected to follow specific protocols and are to be done in a certain way because that’s the way it’s always been done and frankly, “I have a style preference for the old ways.” For some, church attendance is something that you’re supposed to do as Christians because that’s what we are expected to do at least once a week; yet sadly, studies have demonstrated that people do not even feel it’s important to come to church with others in community anymore as we have taken on the attitude and have bit off the lie that “I can find God on my own.” Our friends in AA, recovering alcoholics, know better than that! They know they can’t find sobriety on their own and so they wonder why most Christians think they can develop a healthy spiritual life by themselves without the accountability of others in the community!

And then for some, fewer and fewer these days it seems, some people come really expecting that “God will show up.” Sabbath has become stale and fewer and fewer people that come on Sabbath come without much expectation that they will encounter the bottomless grace-fullness of God’s love and care. We come and we often do not expect miracles to happen like a crippling spirit held captive by Satan being set free from the bondage of spiritual enslavement.

The power of our Story this morning is that Jesus declares and shows us what Sabbath and worship are really about. Sabbath and worship are to focus on God’s purposefully searching for you and me, lifting up this church, and showering us with liberating, extravagant grace.  It’s about our physically coming together as community showing one another that we need each other, and we cannot live a healthy Christ-following life alone. It’s about coming spiritually crippled as we wholeheartedly expect to leave this place and this day with wholeness, healing, and restoration from the hands of Jesus. It’s a day we set aside and expect God to do something wonderful in our lives! This, my beloved, is what it means to reclaim the Sabbath!

Amen!

Patrick H. Wrisley, D.Min.
Senior Pastor & Teaching Elder
First Presbyterian Church
401 SE 15th Avenue
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301

© 2019 Patrick H. Wrisley. Sermon manuscripts are available for the edification of members and friends of First Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida and may not be altered, re-purposed, published or preached without permission.   All rights reserved.

[1] New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Majoring in the Minors and Minoring in the Majors, Isaiah 1.1, 10-20

Posted on August 12, 2019 by patrick h wrisley

Sermon:           Majoring in the Minors and Minoring in the Majors
Scripture:        Isaiah 1.1, 10-20
Preacher:         Patrick H. Wrisley, D.Min.
Location:         First Presbyterian Church Fort Lauderdale
Date:                August 11, 2019

Over the years, I was taught a slogan by a mentor that is a troublesome little idiom used in business. He’s a successful venture capitalist and he told me, “You know, as a leader you always have to ask of yourself or of your business, “Am I majoring in the minors and minoring in the majors?”” In other words, in one’s personal or organizational leadership, we are to pause every once in a while and ask ourselves if we are spending the majority of our time, resources and creativity on the minor things that will not produce very much and are we investing too little time, resources, and creativity to those major items that will generate the most return for the organization. In our case, that would be the Church. Am I, are we as a church, majoring in the minor unimportant things? Are we minoring on the needed, beneficial major things?  You see, it’s all about a question of stopping to evaluate whether one’s expressed values are truly matching and aligning with their expressed actions.

Our text this morning is one that is an ancient example of God asking the people of the southern Kingdom of Judah whether their lives and worship expressed the values of their God or do their actions reflect more like the values of the decaying culture around them? The deal is, God already knows the answer to the question and so our text from Isaiah 1 is God’s way of declaring to the people of Judah, “Your lives, your worship, your very community is majoring in the minors and are minoring in the major, life-giving values of what it means to follow me and be my people”.  Listen to the opening words from the Prophet in chapter 1:1, 10-20. Hear the Word of the Lord!

Isaiah 1:1,10-20

1The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah….

10Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! 11What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. 12When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; 13bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation— I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.14Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. 15When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.

16Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, 17learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.18Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. 19If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; 20but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.[1]

Written during a very unstable political period where wars and rumors of wars were swirling, the prophets of God were trying to forestall a calamity. The kings and the people were playing fast and loose with the covenant they made with God and were at best giving God lip-service in their relationship. The prophet Isaiah quickly opens up his diatribe with a courtroom scene and the people of Judah are on trial.  He immediately outlines the problem in verses 11-17 and then verses 18-20 offer the promise from God if the people get their act together. Sadly, we know from history that the people of Judah failed to get their act together and were taken into exile.

So what’s the problem?  In this courtroom scene, God speaking as the judge goes and compares the leadership and the people to those inhabitants of the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Sadly, he’s not the only prophet to do so.  In Ezekiel 6:49 as the prophet address the people of Jerusalem, he says,

This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but you did not aid the poor and the needy.

This was God’s charge against the people. The people were guilty of committing injustice with their blessings. The Torah demanded the people look after the most vulnerable people in society: The poor, the orphaned and the alien, or as we call them today, the migrants who come searching for a better life among God’s people. A part of the fabric of the Torah was the belief that the covenant people of God looked out and after one another. There was a built-in safety net that demanded they take care of each other. As God showered grace, protection, and provision upon the people delivered from slavery in Egypt, so the people were to exercise the same grace, protection, and provision with their neighboring Jew and alien in their midst. But they didn’t.  Everyone was out for themselves.

Years ago, I heard businessman and author, Ken Blanchard, speak about the problem of expressed values in leadership and the leader’s lack of living into those expressed values. Blanchard, head of a multimillion-dollar company, believed that all employees be treated with equal respect and dignity whether it was a senior vice-president, a Board member, or the night janitor. He had a stated edict among all his employees that if at any time an employee personally felt Blanchard treated them with disrespect or gruffness, they had the right to come to his office and say, “Mr. Blanchard, Gap!”  In other words, if they ever detected that there was a gap or break between Blanchard’s expressed values on how people are to be treated and how he actually related with them, they had the right to come and call him on it. They would tell him there was ‘gap’ between what he said was important and the way he actually acted.

Friends, our text today is God telling the people of Jerusalem, “Gap!”  Isaiah has God telling the people that their sacrifices, their prayers, their incense, and their worship are making him nauseated. All their special holy day celebrations, all the animals they are needlessly sacrificing do not mean a thing to God. In God’s eyes, their worship is shallow.  In God’s eyes, there is a gap between what the people are expressing in worship as love and adoration to God and the way the people are treating the ‘least of these’ in their community.

There’s a gap between the peoples’ celebration of God’s provision when there are hungry people in the streets.

There’s a gap between those shouting, “thank you, Jesus!” and the way the poor are exploited with unfair wages, limited housing, and unjust labor practices.

There’s a gap between how the spiritual community is lifted and celebrated as the highest ideal and the way the people of the faith community actually live out their faith. Sadly, frankly, God is sick of all of it.

Yet, God being God and all, offers a solution and a way out: The Lord says in verses 18 and 19 if you purify yourselves from sin and restore the gap between what you say you believe and how you really behave, if you seek justice for the most vulnerable of the community, if you defend the orphans and widows, then your sin will be bleached white, you will prosper and enjoy the benefits of the land. If your inner compass is directed towards me, and your life reflects what you believe about me, then you will prosper. If you continue to rebel, you have set the course for your own demise.

Beloved, let us stop right here and pause for some self-reflection. What is our text saying to us as members of Christ’s church? What does it say to you as you reflect upon your professed faith in the Lord and how you worship and serve the beloved lambs of God who are on society’s edges?

Our text today is a reminder for thorough spiritual Examen on our parts.  You know, we often have a tendency to compartmentalize our lives into our family life, our social life, our business or school life, and then our spiritual life. The greatest gap of all emerges when we think this way because the reality is our spiritual life is the all-embracing womb that provides nourishment and growth for our family life, social life, business life, and school life. When our spiritual life is not the womb that nourishes, supports, and embraces our whole life, we will live in a perpetual gap-state.  We will live our lives majoring in the minor issues of life that are least important and minor and treat lightly life’s major issues like racism, bigotry, hate and the erasure of moral boundaries.

Our worship of God is the drivetrain that propels us into the world for mission. If it is not, our discipleship is flat and the Church’s future is doomed. The prayers, songs, and offerings of worship that are beautiful in God’s sight are when we inconveniently go out of the way to love the orphan, the widow, the homeless, the sick, the lonely, the hungry, the migrant, the Jew, the Muslim, the Democrat or the Republican. Until we can become aware of that, work on that, and naturally and spiritually live like that, well, God’s not going to be a Happy Camper.

Beloved, what are the gaps in your life? Does what we personally profess we believe and value match with the way we express those values and love to others in the world?  What we say we value as a church match with our commitment as a church with our investment in and with the ‘least of these’?  That’s our homework friends. That’s our homework.  Amen.

Patrick H. Wrisley, D.Min.
Senior Pastor & Teaching Elder
First Presbyterian Church
401 SE 15th Avenue
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
patrickw@firstpres.cc
www.patrickhwrisley.net

© 2019 Patrick H. Wrisley. Sermon manuscripts are available for the edification of members and friends of First Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale Florida and may not be altered, re-purposed, published or preached without permission.   All rights reserved.

[1] The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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The Southern Spiritual Practice of Ponderin’, Psalm 107:1-9, 43

Posted on August 5, 2019 by patrick h wrisley

Sermon:         The Southern Spiritual Practice of Ponderin’
Scripture:      Psalm 107.1-9, 43
Preacher:      Patrick H. Wrisley, D.Min.
Location:       First Pres Fort Lauderdale
Date:               August 4, 2019

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Today is communion Sunday, and frankly, I cannot be more grateful. I awoke this morning at four and scanned the news while waiting for the coffee to finish brewing and saw the new headline, “Ten Dead in Dayton” as some guy shot up a bar last night in Ohio.  Thirty people dead and some fifty others wounded in the last twenty-four hours from violence. Today is communion Sunday, and frankly, I cannot be more grateful.  The meal gives me comfort during a time when I feel unsettled. It gives me hope to look forward to the time when violence of any kind will be no more than a sad recollection of the way things used to be.  It gives me grounding and stability to remain steady and focused while cultural earthquakes from politics, scandals, and illness plague the community we live in and in the lives of those you and I love. Yes, today is communion Sunday, and frankly, I cannot be more grateful.

Our scripture this morning is from Psalm 107:1-9, 43. It’s a wonderful foil to our Gospel reading in Luke 12.13 ff. where Jesus is talking about building bigger barns for our wealth only to die and realize we cannot take it with us. Our psalm this morning reminds us that what’s really crucial in our life is not our money, our stuff, or our things; what matters in our life is God’s steady, consistent loving grace even when our life feels most out of control.  Hear the Word of the Lord from Psalm 107.1-9, 43:

1 O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures forever.
2 Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
those he redeemed from trouble
3 and gathered in from the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south.
4 Some wandered in desert wastes,
finding no way to an inhabited town;
5 hungry and thirsty,
their soul fainted within them.
6 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress;
7 he led them by a straight way,
until they reached an inhabited town.
8 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wonderful works to humankind.
9 For he satisfies the thirsty,and the hungry he fills with good things.

43 Let those who are wise give heed to these things,
and consider the steadfast love of the Lord.[i]

Our psalm is one that is focused upon God’s sustaining love in our lives and in our world even when we open the news and learn of another 10 people dead overnight.  Psalm 107 is a Hebrew song that begins and ends with an ascription to God’s love. In verse 1, we hear how we are to give thanks for the Lord is good and his unmerited love endures forever. The psalm bookends itself with verse 43: Let the wise pay attention to these things and reflect upon the sustaining, unmerited love from the Lord.  As a reader of the text, we are forced to pause and ask, “what things are we supposed to pay attention to?”

When news of El Paso and Dayton come to our attention, when we learn the news our loved one of four decades is fighting an incurable illness, when we in our joy of being

pregnant suffer the hell of a miscarriage, the psalmist is asking us to do the counterintuitive thing and invites us to sit with and ponder our difficult moment on the one hand, but also sit with the remembrance of God’s consistent, repetitive expressions of grace to us when our life has been hard in the past. Although our portion of the psalm only addresses those who are hungry and thirsty, three other stanzas of the song 107 address issues of being bound and persecuted, being sick nigh unto death, and what it’s like to be cast upon an angry, chaotic sea where no hope seems visible. In each instance, the psalm gives us a way to respond to our lives’ crises and disappointments. We see it in our text today.

First, the psalmist declares the presenting problem to God. Verses 4 and 5 says the people were wandering around the desert finding no home to live in while suffering from thirst and hunger.

Second, verse 6 has the psalmist lifting up those concerns to the Lord with tearful cries for help.

Third, verse 6 flows into verse 7 with a description of how the Lord answered their prayer and leads them to a new home.

Fourth and finally, 8 and 9 are a call to remember to give thanks to God for their deliverance in the midst of trouble.

This pattern of the description of adversity, a crying out to God for help, a reminder how the Lord answers prayer, and a call to remember God’s faithful love is repeated three other times in our psalm this morning. Perhaps we are to learn something from this. Let’s look at a moment in Jesus’ life that where we can see this pattern at play.

Jesus’ adult life was filled with conflict, backstabbing, gossip, and violence. On the night he was betrayed, we see him fall on his face crying with tears of blood asking God that the calamity about to break open to be taken from him. Even though Jesus may not be aware of it or sense it at the moment, God the Father was already working on answering the prayer.  We see Jesus fall victim to an unjust political, cultural and spiritual system that nails him to a tree. We may feel God has ignored his prayers and has remained silent.  But as we ponder upon Jesus’ life, we realize it’s not the end of the story yet. We hear him utter his last breath, “It is finished”, but then three days later rise again to new life! God was answering Jesus’ prayer for help in ways Jesus did not originally see or know.  Our Lord’s Supper, our celebrating communion, is our way of entering the ancient drama of this cycle.

We bring our lives as swirly as they are to God in prayer. We come to the Table awaiting the answer to those prayers and as we eat of the bread and drink from the cup, we add our hopeful voice to the pattern of the psalm as we thank God for his steadfast love which endures forever…

…in spite of senseless death;

…in spite of senseless illness or miscarriage;

…in spite of lost jobs and dashed dreams.

In the midst of our chaos moments when we cry for help and wonder if our prayers are falling on deaf ears to the Holy One in heaven, we look through the pain as Jesus did and know we will once again dine with the Lord and those who have gone before us; the Lord’s Supper is our waystation reminding us of this. Our prayers will be answered faithfully and lovingly, and yet, it takes discipline on our part to experience or hear those answers.

This morning I invite us to look at the Supper as a way to participate in and experience the Southern spiritual practice of pondering. Those of us in the South realize there is a reason for porches and patios under the cool of the shade.  It gets too hot to really do anything so we have designed our living places with outdoor spaces we can just go and sit awhile in a rocking chair, brush off the mosquitos and ponder life. We watch the sunsets from our rocking chair and listen to the rain pound on the roof while we sit on the porch just listening, waiting, smelling the air, and pondering. Porch time, pondering time is the Southern spiritual practice of being present with God. It’s calling out and naming our needs and our hurt.  It’s a lifting those needs to God in prayer. And this is the important part to the spiritual practice of pondering: In the midst of the current chaos we are undergoing, we remember how the Lord through the community, this community, has answered our prayers in the past. God always answers prayer but we often do not sit and ponder on how God might be doing that in our life right this moment. We might not see it right away just like Jesus didn’t that night he was betrayed, but pondering is the practice by which we know that God’s love is consistent and true and will not change or leave us.  The promise is that through the consistent spiritual practice of pondering, we will begin to hear, see and experience those Divine answers.

What ails you, my friends? Let’s come and ponder at the Table together, lifting our cries to God and practice together how we can hear the answers.  So be it.

Patrick H. Wrisley, D.Min.
Senior Pastor & Teaching Elder
First Pres Fort Lauderdale
401 SE 15th Avenue
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
Wrisley@outlook.com
patrickhwrisley.net

© 2019 Patrick H. Wrisley. Sermon manuscripts are available for the edification of members and friends of First Presbyterian Church of Fort Lauderdale, Florida and may not be altered, re-purposed, published or preached without permission.   All rights reserved.

[i]New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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