Sermons and Talks at Myers Park Baptist Church

Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell: Luke 24:1-12 – There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. ~ Maya Angelou Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here. ~ Sue Monk Kidd Stories are masks of God. They bear the unbearable, approach the unapproachable, conceive the inconceiveable . . . one of the most vital things we can teach our children is how to tell stories that are rigorously, insistently, beautifully true. And how to believe them. ~ Melanie TemWe tell ourselves stories in order to live. ~ Joan Didion

Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell:  Luke 19:28-48 – When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed. – Fred Rogers

Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell: Luke 16:19-31 – The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference. ~ Elie WieselJesus was both more revolutionary and more conservative than was earlier recognized. He was politically revolutionary in threatening Judaic creditors, and behind them the Pharisees who had rationalized their rights against debtors. Jesus’ call for a Jubilee Year was conservative in resurrecting the economic ideal central to Mosaic Law: widespread annulment of personal debts. This ideal remains so alien to our modern way of thinking that Jesus’ sermons are usually interpreted in a broad compassionate sense of urging personal charity toward one’s own debtors and the poor in general. – Economic Historian, Michael Hudson, . . . And Forgive Them Their Debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year

Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell: Luke 15:11-32 – I now see that the hands that forgive, console, heal, and offer a festive meal must become my own. I witness many signs of hope. I don’t have to wait until all is well, but I can celebrate every little hint of the Kingdom that is at hand. Joy and resentment cannot coexist. Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to a fertile soil for more joy. – Henri J.M. Nouwen, Return of the Prodigal Son

Rev. Lauren Efird: Luke 8:4-15 – Just as our love for God begins with listening to God’s word, the beginning of love for our neighbor is learning to listen to them and their stories. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer Rev. Lauren Efird is Senior Pastor at Greenwood Forest Baptist Church in Cary, NC. She served as Associate Pastor when Ben was their Senior Pastor, and they remain close friends and colleagues in ministry. Lauren earned a Bachelor of Arts in Religion and Psychology at Campbell University and received her Master of Divinity at Duke University. Before coming to Greenwood Forest, Lauren served as a chaplain at UNC Hospitals. Rev. Efird made national news last year when one of her members, Gilles Bikindou, a Congolese immigrant, was suddenly detained and deported by I.C.E. while suffering with life-threatening health issues. You can read more of Rev. Efird’s story of walking that difficult journey with Gilles here >

Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell: Luke 10:25-37 –It’s very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people of another race. Maya Angelou As for what concerns our relations with our fellow humans, the anguish in our neighbors’s soul must break all precept. Our neighbor’s need transcends every commandment. Everything else we do is a means to an end, but love is an end in itself, since God is love. Edith Stein The underlying message of the Neighborhood is that if somebody cares about you, it’s possible that you’ll care about others. “You are special, and so is your neighbor” – that part is essential: that you’re not the only special person in the world. The person you happen to be with at the moment is loved, too. And when we look for what’s best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we’re doing what God does, so in appreciating our neighbor, we’re participating in something truly sacred. Fred Rogers

Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell: Luke 9:21-36 – The cross can heal and hurt; it can be empowering and liberating but also enslaving and oppressive. There is no one way in which the cross can be interpreted . . . the cross places God in the midst of people who are hung, shot, burned, or tortured. ~ James H. Cone It may hurt me, but when I took up the cross I recognized its meaning. . . . It is not something that you wear. The cross is something that you bear and ultimately that you die on. ~ Martin Luther King Jr The cross is a reminder of how humans have tried throughout history to destroy visions of righting relationships that involve transformation of tradition and transformation of social relations and arrangements sanctioned by the status quo. ~ Delores Williams

Dr. Brian Bantum: Mark 5:1-5 – The question of our bodied lives together — and whose bodies matter — is not new. But the protests of the past five years, about everything from police brutality to LGBTQ rights, indicate that the question never leaves us. We are confronted with so many differences and so many refusals, in seemingly endless succession. Our bodies do work in the world. They are a book, a language. And language is more than words and grammar. It is interpretation, the reading of signs. These signs can be words or visual cues, shapes or gestures. Language is that moment when enough people share a reading of how we see and what we say and how we should envision our lives together. This is our reformation moment, a moment that has already begun but whose sinews are slowly connecting. It is beginning to say more fervently that our bodies matter. It is protesting the confinement and execution of dark people. It is a reformation of what can look like God’s people — a calling to embody communities of difference that, when encountered with new possibilities of faithfulness, respond by reconfiguring their walls and their rooms. ~ Brian Bantum, “Who decides what my body means?”

Rev. J. Dana Trent: Luke 6:17-26  and Psalm 1:1-6 – The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. ~ Oscar Wilde The Seven Social Sins are: Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Religion without sacrifice. Politics without principle. ~ Frederick Lewis Donaldson and Mahatma Gandhi

Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell: Luke 5:12-26 – The greatest barrier to our own healing is not the pain, sorrow or violence inflicted upon us as children. Our greatest hindrance is our ongoing capacity to judge, to criticize, and to bring tremendous harm to ourselves. ~ Wayne MullerHealing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.~ Wendell Berry