Sun. Aug. 23, 2009 (Andre Pekovich)

Our summer series continued with Andre Pekovich’s call to simplify our lives, our faith and our religious observance. Andre encouraged us to use the acronym KISS to ‘keep it simple, sinner’. Our love of complicated things often leads us astray, so after Andre reminded us of some sermons we’d heard from the past on keeping things simple, he notes that Timothy is told the same thing, just as the soldier, the athlete and the farmer are told in vs 4. Our Christian past is “littered with more and more complex epistemological constructs until we’re not sure if God is speaking to us or a dictionary”. We’re reminded of the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts” as a guidepost, and Andre then pointed us to vs 8 “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel”. The text notes that Timothy is instructed to 15 “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.” and guide the church to avoid wrangling over words, gossiping; teach with gentleness; do not use bad words, and avoid youthful passions such as anger and intolerance. Andre read out a W.H.Auden poem noting that humans are the only species with the capacity for making the simple complicated, and the need for grace to make them simple again. [AP] Listen to the sermon audio MP3 recording from Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 using your browser's preferred media player.