Lossiemouth Church of Scotland

Taking Paul’s second letter to the Church at Corinth as his text (2 Corinthians 6:1-13), Rev. Geoff McKee explains why Christians must not get bogged down in trivialities but, instead, keep big goals like reconciliation top of mind.

You can download a PDF version of the sermon by clicking here.

2 Corinthians 6:1-13 (New International Version)

6 As God’s co-workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. 2 For he says,

“In the time of my favour I heard you,
and in the day of salvation I helped you.”

I tell you, now is the time of God’s favour, now is the day of salvation.

Paul’s Hardships
3 We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. 4 Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; 5 in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; 6 in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; 7 in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; 8 through glory and dishonour, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; 9 known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; 10 sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

11 We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you. 12 We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. 13 As a fair exchange—I speak as to my children—open wide your hearts also.

Once upon a time two brothers shared adjoining farms.

For over forty years, they worked side by side, sharing equipment and helping each other out whenever needed.

Then, one day a rift developed.

It began with a small misunderstanding and it grew into a major difference. And, finally, it exploded into an exchange of bitter words followed by months of angry silence.

One day the elder brother, Peter, was out in his fields when a van pulled up. Out jumped a man who approached Peter, carrying a carpenter’s toolbox.

“I’m looking for a few days work” he said. “Perhaps you would have a few small jobs I could do for you?”

“Well, yes I do,” said Peter. “See that river down there, it’s the border between my brother’s farm and mine. My brother keeps it nice and deep to stop me from setting one foot on his beloved farm. Well, I’ll oblige him. I want you to take that timber over there by the barn and build me a new fence – a big tall one – so I don’t have to look over at my brother and his farm any more.”

The carpenter was glad to have the work.

“No worries mate. I understand. Just point me to your post-hole digger and I’ll get the job done.”

So the carpenter set about working. Meanwhile, Peter drove into town to the cattle auction.

When he returned at sunset he was shocked to see what the carpenter had done.

There was no fence. [Read more…]

Rev. Geoff McKee’s scripture for the fourth Sunday after Pentecost (17 June 2018) is 2 Corinthians 5:6-17 in which the apostle, Paul, talks about The Ministry of Reconciliation.  Geoff discusses how spirituality has much more to do with subtraction than with addition. Jesus’ spirituality consists in letting go of what we do not need anyway. Ultimately, it is Jesus’ love that holds all things together and not an accumulation of any “good works” we can do. This helps us understand why we should believe that our end will be homecoming to God.

You can download a PDF version of the sermon by clicking here.

2 Corinthians 5:6-17 (New International Version)

6 Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7 For we live by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

The Ministry of Reconciliation
11 Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. 12 We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. 13 If we are “out of our mind,” as some say, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

Eminence, a novel by Australian author Morris West, tells the story of Luca Rossini, a Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church.

Luca came to serve in the Vatican, after having lived in the shadow of a terrible experience he suffered as a young priest in Argentina.

It was the 1970s, a time when the military junta that ruled Argentina, acted with terrible brutality.

Luca was brutalised in front of the villagers. Lucky to escape with his life, he was spirited out of Argentina. Yet the scars across his back are an outward symbol of the scars he bears within.

By the time we find him in West’s novel, Luca is 50 years old, a confidant of a rigidly conservative Pope.

In one scene, the Pope reflects that he, the Pope, will have much to answer for when he comes to judgement before God.

Luca responds, “We pray every day that our trespasses will be forgiven, Holiness. We have to believe that our end will be a homecoming, not a session with torturers!” [Read more…]

Rev. Geoff McKee’s scripture for the third Sunday after Pentecost (10 June 2018) is 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1. He discusses the difficulties of interpreting Paul’s words in a modern context but emphasises that Paul speaks incisively to us on the level that most matters to believers: the level of faith. It’s about how Paul explains the pain of bringing in the new life from the old, day by day.

You can download a PDF version of the sermon by clicking here.

2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1 (New International Version)

13 It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.” Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak, 14 because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. 15 All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.

16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Awaiting the New Body
5 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.

When Calvin Coolidge was President of the United States of America he saw dozens of people every day.

Most had complaints of one kind or another.

A visiting Governor once told Coolidge he didn’t understand how he could see so many people. “Why, you finish with them by dinner time,” the Governor remarked, “while I’m often at my desk till midnight.”

“Yes,” said Coolidge, “But you talk back.”

How frequently does our God come across like Calvin Coolidge – silent in the face of our requests and protests?

The apostle Paul was experiencing some communication difficulties and, in sharing these with the Corinthians, so he offers us some comfort.

There are times when we are on our knees and it seems that there are no answers.

• Have you ever been thinking of someone and then the phone has rung and on picking it up there on the other end of the line is the person you have been thinking of?
• Have you ever woken up two minutes before the especially early alarm call that you have set the night before?

[Read more…]

Rev. Geoff McKee’s scripture for 03 June 2018 is from the apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. Paul compares Christians to earthen jars and this metaphor challenges us to recognise that we cannot live faithfully as followers of Christ by justifying ourselves. Instead, we must understand how in our weakness we show the way of Christ and share the gospel as a result.

Click here to download a PDF version of the sermon.

2 Corinthians 4:5-12 (New International Version)

5 For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.

7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 12 So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

In 2009 Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford, published A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.

It is an excellent, general and very readable history that seeks to tell the documented story of Christianity.

In 2013 he published Silence: A Christian History. It’s a remarkable, alternative history that seeks to tell the story of Christianity through what has not been said. That might seem like an impossibility but he produced a fascinating book.

As an example of an intriguing silence, he wrote about the strange case of the name ‘Mark’.

He wrote:

“As an example of a silence which has always fascinated me, from my first historical specialization in the sixteenth century, is the almost total absence of the Christian name Mark in late medieval and Tudor England, when the names of two of his fellow-Evangelists are common, and another, John, is overwhelmingly present. The one obvious exception which proves the rule, Anne Boleyn’s unfortunate musician Mark Smeaton, might explain later Tudor silence by discrediting the name because he was executed for treasonous adultery with the queen, but does not account for what went before.”

He goes on:

“This is one silence, apparently trivial, yet surely significant, for which so far I have found no good explanation. If we were to solve it, we might learn something new about the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.”

It’s a brilliant book and it emphasises to us that there is much that has not been said or recorded that is crucial to a broader understanding. There may be a number of reasons why facts have not been disclosed but, in the main, silence is due to human weakness. No-one wants the cupboard door to be flung open and all the skeletons to come tumbling out.

There are a good number of skeletons that appear in McCulloch’s book.

The apostle Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, desired to remain silent about his recent personal history.

This was because he was aware that a straightforward appeal to his experience would not wash with the sceptical Corinthians.

When Paul wrote to the Galatians he felt a great deal of freedom to simply state the chain of events that led him to be a self-proclaimed apostle to the Gentiles. The context was very different and clearly he did not fear a concerted backlash to his efforts.

However, with the difficult Corinthians, it could be very different. He couldn’t afford not to be heard because he was perceived as being too pushy. He didn’t want these people to be thinking to themselves: ‘Who does this fellow think he is?’. He needed to introduce himself in such a way that he made a claim to be heard but did not come over as being arrogant. And, you know, I think he did a remarkable job!

Once there was an emperor in the Far East who was growing old.

He knew it was coming time to choose his successor. But, instead of choosing one of his assistants or one of his own children, he decided to do something different.

He called all the young people in the kingdom together one day. He said, “It has come time for me to step down and to choose the next emperor. I have decided to choose one of you.”

The kids were shocked!

But the emperor continued. “I am going to give each one of you a seed today. One seed. It is a very special seed. I want you to go home, plant the seed, water it and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from this one seed. I will then judge the plants that you bring to me, and the one I choose will be the next emperor of the kingdom!”

There was one boy named Ling who was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed. He went home and excitedly told his mother the whole story. She helped him get a pot and some planting soil, and he planted the seed and watered it carefully. Every day he would water it and watch to see if it had grown.

After about three weeks, some of the other youths began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow. Ling kept going home and checking his seed, but nothing ever grew. Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by. Still nothing.

By now others were talking about their plants but Ling didn’t have a plant, and he felt like a failure. Six months went by, still nothing in Ling’s pot. He just knew he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing. Ling didn’t say anything to his friends, however. He just kept waiting for his seed to grow.

A year finally went by and all the youths of the kingdom brought their plants to the emperor for inspection. Ling told his mother that he wasn’t going to take an empty pot. But she encouraged him to go, and to take his pot, and to be honest about what happened. Ling felt sick to his stomach, but he knew his mother was right. He took his empty pot to the palace.

When Ling arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by all the other youths. They were beautiful, in all shapes and sizes. Ling put his empty pot on the floor and many of the other kinds laughed at him. A few felt sorry for him and just said, “Hey, nice try.”

When the emperor arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted the young people. Ling just tried to hide in the back. “My, what great plants, trees and flowers you have grown,” said the emperor. “Today, one of you will be appointed the next emperor!”

All of a sudden, the emperor spotted Ling at the back of the room with his empty pot.

He ordered his guards to bring him to the front. Ling was terrified. “The emperor knows I’m a failure! Maybe he will have me killed!”

When Ling got to the front, the Emperor asked his name. “My name is Ling,” he replied. All the kids were laughing and making fun of him. The emperor asked everyone to quiet down.

He looked at Ling, and then announced to the crowd, “Behold your new emperor! His name is Ling!”

Ling couldn’t believe it. Ling couldn’t even grow his seed. How could he be the new emperor?

Then the emperor said, “One year ago today, I gave everyone here a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds which would not grow. All of you, except Ling, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grown, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Ling was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new emperor!”

Courage and honesty were at the heart of Paul’s appeal to the Corinthians.

Like Ling, Paul wrestled with all the doubts and insecurities that come with being given responsibility.

The easy way would have been to bluster on and make a case for his credibility.

The hard way was to admit his weakness, a mere clay jar, an earthen vessel; something that easily breaks and then – to everyone’s surprise – the treasure is exposed.

The challenge for us all is to understand that we do not live faithfully as followers of Christ by justifying ourselves. We do not have to do that because it is in our very weakness that the way of Christ is demonstrated and the gospel is shared.

It is a very hard lesson to learn and we are fortunate that the apostle Paul was able to communicate it to us through the example of his Saviour. May God help us to live in the same manner.

Amen.