It Happened at Church Camp

1 Corinthians 12: 4-13
Roger Lynn

July 28, 2019
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(click here for the video for this sermon)

It has become a long-standing practice for me that when I spend a week engaged in a particular activity or event (in this case serving as chaplain for 3/4/5 Grade Church Camp) the sermon I preach on the following Sunday is titled “It Happened At…”. I do not write the sermon before I leave for the event, because I do not yet know what I will say. I have to experience it first. This has become for me a spiritual practice – trusting in God’s Spirit that something worthy of sharing in the sermon will occur, and that I will notice. I have yet to be disappointed, and this past week was no exception.

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I’ve lost track of how many “It Happened at Church Camp” sermons I’ve preached, but it’s a lot. And the truth is that while each one was unique, they have all had a lot in common. Particularly the theme of community - the many becoming one. This year‘s camp began much as other camps before it. The children (14 third, fourth, and fifth graders) arrived with a mixture of enthusiasm and trepidation. And community began to form. The experience can be summed up with the Call to Worship that I created for our evening vesper services. 

We have been through another day,

And God was with us all the way.

We laughed and we learned, 

And God was with us all the way.

We played and we sang, 

And God was with us all the way.

We walked and we rested, 

And God was with us all the way.

We remembered and we forgot, 

And God was with us all the way.

Now we come to the end of the day, 

And God is still with us all the way.

Admirers or Followers?

Matthew 7: 21-29

Roger Lynn

July 14, 2019

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(click here for the video for this sermon)

“Talk is cheap!” True, deep, genuine faith is about more than just talk.  It is about the values we cherish and the ways in which those values are reflected in the living of our lives.

Sometimes I wish we weren’t called Christians. At times it seems like too big a temptation to misunderstand what really lies at the heart of our faith. All too often we find our attention focused on Christ, instead of on the life to which Christ points us. I think it was the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, who observed that there were too many admirers of Jesus, and not enough followers of Jesus. The Church was never supposed to be a Jesus Admiration Society. It was intended as a community where we encourage each other to discover and follow the path which Jesus points us to. In the early days of the Church, before the name Christian caught on as the description given to those who were a part of the movement, the name by which they were known was “Followers of the Way.” 2,000 years later it’s still not a bad description. It helps to keep our attention primarily on the path, instead of on the guide. Please don’t get me wrong – the guide is important, but only if we allow him to serve as guide. In the text we read this morning from Matthew’s Gospel we find Jesus offering a warning about this very danger. “You can’t just use the right words. It’s not enough to drop my name and expect everything to automatically work out OK. I don’t want lip service. I want heart service.” 

But, Then Again, I Could Be Wrong!

Matthew 15: 21-28

Roger Lynn

July 7, 2019

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The passage we just heard read from Matthew has always left me squirming. I have often had a difficult time knowing what to make of it or what to do with it. How did this story even get included in the Gospels? It seems to run against the grain at several different levels. In this story Jesus doesn’t come off looking very, well, very Jesus-like. He isn’t very nice, or kind, or fair, or just. It has always seemed just a little bit creepy to read this story. The floor tips a bit off-center.

But then I read it this time, and something different clicked. I saw something new. The trick is to set aside what you think Jesus is “supposed” to be like, and simply look at what he is actually doing. And what he is actually doing is being very human. In fact, it might be argued that this story represents one of the most honestly human glimpses of Jesus in the whole Bible. And in so doing, we find him offering us a faithful path to follow in our own humanity.