Lossiemouth Church of Scotland

The scripture for Rev. Geoff McKee’s sermon on 25 June 2017 was Matthew 10:24-39. This is in many ways a difficult and disturbing passage – among other things, challenging our perception of what it means “to be like Jesus”. Because it challenges our sensibilities, it is a Gospel reading that is hard to like – but it’s one that is all the more important to read and reflect upon, as a result.

The scripture is immediately below and the sermon follows after that. You can download a pdf version of the sermon, if you wish, by clicking here.

Matthew 10:24-39 (New International Version)

24 “The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master. 25 It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!

26 “So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. 27 What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. 28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. 30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

32 “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. 33 But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.

34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn

“‘a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
36 a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’
37 “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.

There are some Scriptures that are easy to read and appealing to us.

We like to dwell on these Scriptures because they have brought comfort to us; they have remained with us through the ups and downs of life and we might even have committed some of them to memory.

There are other Scriptures that are so disturbing to us that we would really like never to read them again.

They jar against our sensibilities. They disturb us because they do not fit with our understanding of Christ and his kingdom and we find it much easier to try and forget about them than to wrestle with them.

The Gospel text this morning is, for me, an example of one of these awkward Scriptures: [Read more…]

This is Rev. Geoff McKee’s sermon for 18 June 2017. You can download a pdf version of the sermon if you wish, by clicking HERE.

Matthew 9:35-10:23 (New International Version)

The Workers Are Few
35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

Jesus Sends Out the Twelve
10 Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.

2 These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; 3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; 4 Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6 Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. 7 As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.

9 “Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts— 10 no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep. 11 Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy person and stay at their house until you leave. 12 As you enter the home, give it your greeting. 13 If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. 14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. 15 Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.

16 “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. 17 Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. 18 On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. 19 But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, 20 for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

21 “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. 22 You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 23 When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.

I would like to remind you of a story I have told you before.

A very religious man was once caught in rising floodwaters. He climbed onto the roof of his house and trusted God to rescue him. A neighbour came by in a canoe and said, “The waters will soon be above your house. Hop in and we’ll paddle to safety.”

“No thanks” replied the religious man. “I’ve prayed to God and I’m sure he will save me.”

A short time later the police came by in a boat. “The waters will soon be above your house. Hop in and we’ll take you to safety.” [Read more…]

For Pentecost Sunday – 04 June 2017 – Rev. Geoff McKee has the contrasting stories from Acts 2:1-21 (The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost) and Genesis 11:1-9 (The Tower of Babel) as the scriptural basis of his sermon. The scriptures are immediately below and the sermon follows after that. You can download a pdf version of the sermon if you wish, by clicking here.

Acts 2:1-21 (New International Version)

The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost
2 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

Peter Addresses the Crowd
14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. 15 These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! 16 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

17 “‘In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
18 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.
19 I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.
20 The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
21 And everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

Genesis 11:1-9 (New International Version)

The Tower of Babel
11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Power can be used in at least two ways: it can be unleashed, or it can be harnessed.

The energy in ten gallons of petrol, for instance, can be released explosively by dropping a lighted match into the barrel.

Or it can be channeled – through the engine of a car in a controlled burn – and used to transport a person 350 miles.

Explosions are spectacular, but controlled burns have lasting effect, staying power.

The Holy Spirit works both ways.

At Pentecost, he exploded on the scene; His presence was like “tongues of fire” (Acts 2:3). Thousands were affected by one burst of God’s power.

This remains the one outstanding example in Scripture of God’s Spirit seizing hold of the moment and turning everything upside down.

Most accounts of the Spirit’s work were not like this.

Instead, we find a quiet, steady compulsion or witness that undermines complacency and brings about change.

You see, the Holy Spirit works through the church – which Jesus began – to tap the Holy Spirit’s power for the long haul.

Through worship, fellowship, and service, Christians are provided with staying power.

And how we need it!

Two thousand years have passed since the events described in Jerusalem that day.

No-one in the early Church would have conceived such a scenario unfolding. Christ would be back within the span of the generation who were left. There would be no reason to doubt that. Why would he be waiting any longer after all?

So there was – quite naturally – a boldness in witness and a firm resolve to get the message out there so that people would be prepared to meet the returning Messiah. There was no point in being shy about this when time was short.

If only they could have seen the convoluted journey that the Church would embark on through two thousand years. Would they have set off at such a pace with that knowledge?

We will never know. But we do know now that the work which was begun that day in Jerusalem is still needed. The task has not been completed despite the efforts of so many millions of people through the generations.

The incredible story of the tower of Babel lurks in the background to the Spirit’s explosive work at Pentecost.

This ancient tale sought to offer an explanation for the dispersion of the nations of the world and for the many languages that are found among humanity.

From the desire to pull together to be a powerful force came the blowing apart of their intentions and a fragmentation that they would never recover from, or so it seemed.

Ethnic groups would form nations who would compete for supremacy and none would rest until they achieved the upper hand. Through the course of history no nation was able to win through decisively, and so the curse of Babel remained.

And when we arrive at Jerusalem, with the thousands gathered to celebrate the ancient Jewish feast of Pentecost, we find the crowds in confusion. No doubt the people were struggling to understand one another. The Jews, after all, had travelled from across the known world to be there. They would have shared a knowledge of the common languages of the time but each one would have been aware of the cultural differences among the people.

And so – when the disciples emerged outside addressing the crowds in their own languages – it caused quite a stir.

What could this mean?

None of them could have predicted that this was the beginning of the reversal of the curse of Babel. No-one could possibly have been as fore-sighted as that but that was precisely what was happening.

Here was a new order emerging in the midst of the confusion. It is no accident that this new order appeared in speech. It was the communication in the many languages that made the impact.

Remember the significance of speech in the creation of the world.

How often do we find written in Genesis 1, “and God said”? We read it continually through the chapter.

It was the speech of God that brought order out of confusion. Babel represented the exact opposite of that order as speech became confused and people pulled apart into their own little groups.

At Pentecost, ‘the them and us’ mentality was taken on.

The old divisions were confronted by the radical word of God, spoken by a group of uneducated Jews.

It began with the Jews. All those who were gathered in Jerusalem that day were Jews from all over the known world. God was beginning his work of reconciliation with his own people. The same principle remains for us today, this new Pentecost Sunday. God begins each day with his own people.

Being much concerned about the rise of denominations in the church, John Wesley told of a dream he had.

In the dream, he was ushered to the gates of Hell. There he asked, “Are there any Presbyterians here?” “Yes!”, came the answer. Then he asked, “Are there any Baptists? Any Episcopalians? Any Methodists?” The answer was Yes! each time.

Much distressed, Wesley was then ushered to the gates of Heaven. There he asked the same question, and the answer was No! “No?” To this, Wesley asked, “Who then is inside?” The answer came back, “There are only Christians here.”

That remains the initial challenge of Pentecost.

If there are divisions among God’s people – to the extent that we might as well be speaking different languages from one another – then we are in trouble.

Our lives are simply reflective of the old order of things: the time of Babel.

Our voice cannot be united and so we sound like a clamouring crowd: no-one can make out anything we are saying, it is just a din.

That is what happens when the Spirit is not being heeded.

We have observed already that the actions of the Holy Spirit on that Pentecost day were explosive. But that is not the normative way that the Spirit works.

Ordinarily, it is the still, strong voice; the steady compulsion to get up and to get out and to make a difference.

On that first Pentecost the tongues of the apostles were already loosed before they left the room. They were on their way out into the crowd before they knew where they were.

It is unlikely to be like that for us. We’re unlikely to be given a supernatural ability to speak a strange tongue but just as impressively our tongues may be loosed to speak and to act in ways which we could never have done before.

Wherever there is division of any kind, we are called to get up and to go out.

We are called to bring the presence of God’s Spirit, that alienation and confusion would be dispelled and the reconciling power of God would be at work.

All of this is exciting and surprising.

No-one could have seen beyond life as it always was after Babel. The possibility of a new way was lost even to the most imaginative dreamer.

Not everyone would embrace the new way of Pentecost. Many would be in danger of being left behind and that remains the danger today.

If people would have been asked in 1968 which nation would dominate the world in watch making during the 1990s and into the twenty-first century the answer would have been uniform:

Switzerland.

Why? Because Switzerland had dominated the world of watch making for the previous sixty years.

The Swiss made the best watches in the world and were committed to constant refinement of their expertise.

• It was the Swiss who came forward with the minute hand and the second hand.

• They led the world in discovering better ways to manufacture the gears, hearings, and mainsprings of watches.

• They even led the way in waterproofing techniques and self-winding models.

• By 1968, the Swiss made 65 percent of all watches sold in the world and laid claim to as much as 90 percent of the profits.

By 1980, however, they had laid off thousands of watch-makers and controlled less than 10 percent of the world market.

Their profit domination dropped to less than 20 percent. Between 1979 and 1981, fifty thousand of the sixty-two thousand Swiss watchmakers lost their jobs.

Why? The Swiss had refused to consider a new development—the—the Quartz movement—ironically, invented by a Swiss.

Because it had no main-spring or knob, it was rejected.

It was too much of a paradigm shift for them to embrace.

Seiko, on the other hand, accepted it and, along with a few other companies, became the leader in the watch industry.

The lesson of the Swiss watchmakers is profound.

A past that was so secure, so profitable, so dominant was destroyed by an unwillingness to consider the future.

It was more than not being able to make predictions—it was an inability to re-think how they did business. Past success had blinded them to the importance of seeing the implications of the changing world and to admit that past accomplishment was no guarantee of future success.

Everything has changed.

The new era has begun and we rejoice in the abundant blessings of our God.

The sixth Sunday of Easter was 21 May 2017 and Rev. Geoff McKee’s sermon was based on 1 Peter 3:13-22. He considers two difficult issues from that Scripture: the so-called “Harrowing of hell”; and the issue of baptism and its claim for salvation. He goes on to encourage us, in the week of the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly in Edinburgh, to leave aside dogmatic ways and – with gentleness and reverence – engage effectively with others by respecting their views when we may not agree with them.

As usual, the scripture is immediately below, followed by the sermon.  Alternatively – or in addition – you can download a pdf version of the sermon by clicking here.

1 Peter 3:13-22 (New International Version)

13 Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? 14 But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.” 15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 16 keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. 17 For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. 18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 19 After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits— 20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.

Isn’t it odd that one of the least referred to – and most obscure – events in Scripture is referenced in the Apostles’ and Athanasian Creeds; succinct and valued summations of early Christian belief?

This is the so-called ‘Harrowing of hell’.

It is solely based on Ephesians 4:9 and 1 Peter 3:19-20 which refer to Jesus’ descent to the place of the dead and to his preaching to spirits in prison, presumably after his crucifixion and before his resurrection.

It’s all very murky and uncertain – and sounds extremely odd in our rational, sceptical age.

We might be tempted to ignore it and we might be embarrassed that it is found in the Apostles’ Creed, in particular: after all it’s not easy to avoid it in the most universally accepted of all the Christian creeds.  And, even if we belong to the most non-creedal traditions of Christianity, we still have a problem with this teaching appearing in the New Testament.  So what can we say about it? [Read more…]