Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship · August 20, 2006

Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost

Prayer of the Day

God of all the ages, thank you for loving us and gracing us with the witness of lives lived by your invitation and your sustaining wisdom.  May we be open to your presence within us and among us.  Amen

Scripture

I Kings 2:1-3;10-12

When David’s time to die drew near, he charged his son Solomon saying: “I’m about to go the way of all the earth.  Be strong.  Be courageous, and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in God’s way, keeping God’s statutes, God’s commandments, God’s ordinances, and God’s testimony, as it is written in the Law of Moses, so that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn.”

Then David slept with his ancestors and was buried in the City of David.  The time that David reigned over Israel was forty years.  He reigned seven in Hebron, thirty-three years in Jerusalem.  So Solomon sat on the throne of his father David, and Solomon’s kingdom was firmly established.

Message

Lasting Words – Lasting Living

Kim Ryan

As several of you know, I spent most of July in San Francisco.  Last week, June Klootwyk asked me, “Was it fun?”  Well, I hadn’t thought about it being fun.  But it was.  It was fun if you consider fun to be 170 hours of instruction, a supervised practicum, lots of experiential reflection, 42 people doing extensive large-group work, seven people doing intensive small-group work, role play, taped conferences verbatim, dyads, and triads.  That’s fun.  Isn’t it?

Personally, I loved it.  Not having been in school for 22 years, I had forgotten how much I really do enjoy school, and that kind of a class, and learning in that way.  It was intense.  It was stretching.  It was powerful.  It was life changing for me. And it was fun.  But, of course, it has been suggested that I may not be exactly normal when it comes to assessing fun.

I will tell you what was also really fun.  It was getting to spend a weekend with Molly Frost.  If you don’t know, Molly is the daughter of Jan and Rick Frost, our senior minister.  And she is all grown up.  I first met Molly when she was six years old.  Now, at 24, she has graduated from college.  She has found a job in her career area in advertising with a very exciting firm.  She has a really cool office.  You can go up on the roof, and you can see the bridge.  She’s right on the wharf.  She has an apartment right in the heart of San Francisco.  She’s doing really well, and it was fun to see her and to be with her. 

But for all these things that Molly has going for her, she has not been able to find a church.  You may have heard Rick mention that in this past year.  She really misses Broadway. 

So a month ago today, Molly and I visited a church called Glide Memorial United Methodist Church.  Has anybody else been there?  Oh, one person.  I had never heard of Glide Memorial, but there were some folks in this course I was taking who said it was a “must-see” kind of church.  “You have to go.”  I had no idea how famous Glide Memorial United Methodist Church was or is.  Glide is located at the corner of Ellis and Taylor, on the edge of one of San Francisco’s harshest urban environments.  In its years there, it has become an oasis.  It has served the poor and the disenfranchised for over 40 years. 

You see… In the 1960s, this traditional Methodist Church took a radical turn and began to intentionally and on-purpose invite, and welcome, and serve, and include hippies, and addicts, and gays, and the poor, and the prostitutes in their neighborhood, and the marginalized.  They became known as a Community of Compassion in Action.  Today Glide draws people from all walks of life – people who are responding to this kind of action, Christian action and witness. 

Well, Molly and I arrived for the eleven o’clock worship service.  We stepped through the sights and the smells of the homeless who had spent that night under the protection of the front of their church.  We thought we were early, but even so, we ended up sitting on the steps of the balcony.  That’s how full this sanctuary was.  It is a sanctuary probably about our size, but just add a balcony to that.  The music had already begun, and it was kind of a jazzy celebration of music that just drew you into its rhythm of praise and worship.  In a word, it was incredible.

Three songs and an opening prayer and I could have gone, because I felt like I had worshiped.  I could not keep from smiling in the midst of that congregation.  I had a pretty good sense that God was smiling, smiling at the vibrant music, smiling at the keyboardist, who I looked up and happened to notice was playing the keyboard with one hand and a saxophone with the other.  I had a sense that God was smiling at us in that packed sanctuary that was filled with every race of people imaginable.  Every expression of human being gathered together in that one place on a Sunday morning.  It was an in-your-face affront to the urban church myth that we worship best with our own kind.

I had a sense that God was smiling when we were greeted with the word, “God made you just as you are, and you are welcomed here.”  That was enough for me.  I could have left right then, gone to the zoo to see the baby giraffe, which I did later.  But there was much more to come in that service of worship.  Much more. 

You see… Molly and I just happened to arrive on a very special day in the life of this church.  They were celebrating the 100^th birthday of Mother Ruth Vilia Jones.  And she was there.  A beautiful African-American woman, and she stood, and she told the congregation, “I have heard everything.  I have seen everything.  I have done everything.  I just can’t remember everything.”

On a screen, we saw pictures of her life, and her story, and her years of being the guiding, directing, chastising, energizing mother of this church.  They described her in a word, and the word for their description of her was, “Compassion.” 

They told stories of the many times when her response to need was, “Let’s do it.”  There were hungry people just outside the church’s door that needed food, and she said, “Let’s do it.”  And a soup kitchen was started.

There were children who began to show up in their community of faith in about the ‘70s, and she said, “Let’s do it.”  And a Sunday School program was born for those children.

There were people in prison, and she said, “Let’s do it.”  And a prison visitation ministry was begun.

I got the feeling that Mother Ruth was not necessarily a respecter of committee process.  I breathed a sigh of relief that she lives in San Francisco and not Columbia, MO. 

She is a leader.  She is a dynamo of compassion in action, a prophetess.  A much-obliged reputation is due to Mother Ruth.  It was a wonderful tribute of her as a person, but most importantly as a follower of Jesus Christ, because that’s what her life, and her actions, and her advocacy have pointed.  It was a celebration.  It was worship at its finest.  It was like a funeral, only better because she was there.  She got to see the love, and the honor, and the appreciation to God for her life, and for her love, and for her witness as a Christian. 

It was one of those sparkling moments, one of those times when you know you are standing on holy ground just to be present, just to be there.  It was like time beneath time.  I can’t tell you what time church ended.  I never looked at my watch.  I don’t know when we left.  But what I do know is when I left, I had been powerfully impacted by the witness and the power of this life so well lived, so powerfully lived.  And I was left with an unspoken question.  That question was “How do you want to be remembered?”  “How do you want your lived life to be given expression?”  For Mother Ruth, it was in the words, “Lived compassion,” and “Let’s do it!”

How do you want to live?  How do I want to live and be remembered?

Our Scripture this morning, from I Kings, brings us into this ending time.  It’s an ending kind of time with one whose life is celebrated and remembered as a leader of a faith community, King David.  I tried to picture this week an encounter between Mother Ruth and King David.  Just try to picture that if you would.  Mother Ruth, the honored leader of this incredible, dynamic faith community, and King David, the most-honored king and leader of the Christian-Jewish tradition. 

King David was remembered as having risen from a shepherd’s life, being called by God to lead, achieving the unexpected victory over the enemy, that giant Goliath.  He was known as charming and gallant, a shrewd politician, the architect of a united nation of Israel, a champion of Israel’s faith.  He was called a man after God’s own heart.

So can you picture their conversation?  He and Mother Ruth?  Certainly they would share the “Let’s Do It?” attitude.  They would share the “Let’s Kill the Giant” mentality, whatever the giant was they were taking on.  But I’m not sure the word “compassion” would have been the descriptive for King David.  He might echo with Ruth Jones, “I’ve seen everything.  I’ve heard everything.  I’ve done everything.”  But his last line would be, “I wish I didn’t remember everything.”

David’s story is much too long.  It’s too complex to do it justice this morning, so I encourage any of our small groups to consider doing a Bible study of his life.  But let me just say that for all of his success, for all of his victories, his wealth, his glory, his reputation, he made some huge mistakes, not the least of which was he took another man’s wife – a man who was fighting one of David’s political battles.  When she became pregnant, David tried to trick the man into coming home in a kind of cover-up possibility.  When that failed, he sent the man, the soldier, to the front line knowing he would be killed.  And he was.  Then King David did the respectable thing.  He married Bathsheba, and she became one of his many wives. 

And the son Solomon, from our Scripture this morning, who is standing by David’s deathbed, is their child.  He is the son of Bathsheba and David.  Solomon will become the next king, but the conflict, and the strife, and the sins of the father will continue to reverberate in Israel’s history, and into Israel’s future, and some would say even into today. 

So we stand as observers at this deathbed, this intimate moment between father and son.  We don’t know if there are any musical celebrations surrounding them.  We don’t know if it was just the two of them, or if there was a large audience who were offering their words of honor to King David, but we do know it is a sacred time, as those sacred times can be.  It is a time beneath time when David speaks words of instruction and encouragement to his son, to Solomon, and we merely witness his words.

“I’m about to go the way of all the earth,” he says.  “Be strong.  Take courage.  Walk in the ways of God.” 

Don’t those words become even more powerful knowing what Solomon must have known?  That his father had not always been strong.  That he had not always acted courageously.  He had not always walked in the ways of God.  Was this hypocrisy at its highest?

I don’t think so.  I think David’s final words to his son offer the highest hopes for himself, for his loved one, for the next king of Israel.  Hope for a life well lived, grounded in the wisdom and the grace of God.  Those words do bear a touch of what we parents know very well, “Do as I say, and not as I do.”

David’s words, I believe, echo a contrite heart, and what he knows are the values of one who is “after God’s own heart” – strength, and courage, and intentional walking with God.  “And then David slept with his ancestors, and Solomon sat upon the throne of his father, and Solomon’s kingdom was firmly established,” at least for a while. 

But there again is the question.  When the time comes in my life, like the time of Mother Ruth or King David, “How do I hope to be remembered?”  When the time comes, the way that all of the earth goes, “How do I want my life to be honored?”

Often I am present at funeral services, and I witness lives so well lived, like Karl Goebel.  And I witness lives not so well lived. 

Years ago in another place and in another time, I got a phone call, and I was asked to do a funeral for an elderly woman who was the distant aunt of a man whose wife occasionally came to the church.  Of course, I said, “Yes,” and I set up the time to meet with the family at the funeral home.  I went, and I introduced myself.  There were three of them that were there.  We sat down together, and I said, “What is it that we should remember about Erma?  How should we honor her tomorrow?”

There was silence.  There was more silence.  Then one of them said, “Well, she was the most selfish person I ever knew.”  The other two nodded, and that was it.  They did not say another word.  I’ll tell you.  That was a minister’s nightmare.  It was no sparkling, sacred moment.

But there’s the question.  “How do you want to be remembered?”  It really is a question of “How do you want to live?”  Those choices are right now.  Living the choices we make right now impact the life for which we will be remembered.

Mother Ruth and King David certainly had one thing in common.  They longed to be faithful to God.  Did they do it perfectly?  Well, we know David didn’t.  And I would say likely there are those who would say Mother Ruth hasn’t done it perfectly either.  But it’s not about perfection.  It is about intention.  It is about commitment.  It is about choices.

I want to end this sermon with just a few moments of silence.  A few moments of silence, and in that silence I invite you to close your eyes, if you would like to, or simply to turn your focus inward, and let yourself consider the words that you would hope would describe you at your 100^th birthday celebration, or at your memorial service.  I invite you to let the words of your hopes, and your intentions, your commitment, your choices prayerfully come to mind and to your heart.  How do you want to be remembered?  How do you want your lived life to be honored?

Let us be quiet together.

May it be so in my life and in yours.

And we say together… “Amen.”

Benediction

God of all, thank you for the legacy of Christ.  Bless us with strength, courage, and direction that we might ever walk in your ways.  Amen!