Sermons and Talks at Myers Park Baptist Church

In his first sermon as Senior Minister of Myers Park Baptist Church, Reverend W. Benjamin Boswell drew on the words of our covenant for inspiration. He focused on two sentences in particular: “We covenant to be a community of God’s new creation and affirm that we are open to all and closed to none. We covenant together to nurture this Church as a community of faith and as an instrument for reconciliation in the world.” His sermon evokes Paul’s “kaine ktisis” — the new creation was Paul’s term for the dream of the Church.

Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell: Mark 16:9-13 – For God to save us, God must invade. And God’s primary weapon is resurrection. My people envisioned and embodied resurrection. And they used it as a weapon. They preached exodus when they were in Egypt. They drew education down from the sky when there was no legal opportunity for it on this earth. They faced down dogs, police, water cannons, and entire regions of hostility when there seemed to be no safe way forward. Because they glimpsed what resurrection beyond slavery looked like, what resurrection beyond segregation looked like, and then embodied it and preached it, even though the very living of it brought more of the living death force of slavery and segregation down upon their heads. They lived resurrection until they participated in the unleashing of resurrection. They used resurrection as a weapon. – Brian K. Blount

Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell: Mark 16:1-8 And death shall have no dominion.Dead man naked they shall be oneWith the One in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane,Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion. – Dylan Thomas

Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell: Mark 11:1-11Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,The seething holy city of my heart,The saviour comes. But will I welcome him?Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll findThe challenge, the reversal he is bringingChanges their tune. I know what lies behindThe surface flourish that so quickly fades;Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,The hardness of the heart, its barricades,And at the core, the dreadful emptinessOf a perverted temple. Jesus comeBreak my resistance and make me your home.Malcolm Guite, Palm Sunday

Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell: Matthew 11:7-24 – The wilderness is a good teacher. It is a place where we do not die of thirst. It is a place where we rediscover the roots of our existence. Once we grasp this lesson, we realize that the physical desert is not necessary to lead the life of a hermit. It then becomes pointless to go in search of a desert on the globe. You can find your desert in a corner of your house, on a motorway, in a square, in a crowded street. But you must first renounce the slavery of illusions, refuse the blackmail of pressure, resist the glitter of appearances, repudiate the domination of activity, reject the dictatorship of hypocrisy. Then the desert becomes a place where we do not go out to see the sand blowing in the wind but the Spirit waiting to make its dwelling within us. ~ Alessandro Pronzato, Meditations on the Sand

Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell: 1 Kings 19:1-16 – There is a physical wilderness, inhabited by a few exceptional men and women who are called to live there; but more importantly, there is an inner wilderness, into which each one of us must one day venture. It is a voice; an empty space for solitude and testing. – Frere Ivan, The Desert and the City

Rev. Chrissy Tatum Williamson Preaching – Genesis 21:8-21 – I am not asking youto take this wilderness from me,to remove this place of starknesswhere I come to knowthe wilderness within me,where I learn to call the namesof the ravenous beaststhat pace inside me,to finger the bramblesthat snake through my veins,to taste the thirstthat tugs at my tongue.Jan Richardson – “In Wisdom’s Path”

Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell: Genesis 16:5-14 – The desert of which I speak is a desert of the spirit: a place of revelation, conversion, and transformation. A true revelation is a very disturbing event because it demands a response; and to respond means some kind of inner revolution. It involves being “made over,” being “made new,” being “born again.” The desert, then, is a place of revolution. In the desert we wait, we weep, we learn to live. ~ Alan Jones

Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell: Numbers 11:10-23 – If you look at a map, the people of Israel could have arrived at the Promised Land in about three weeks, but instead it took 40 years. Why? They needed to wander long enough to find out who they were. They were God’s chosen people, but they had forgotten. Egypt had given them other names: midwives, brick makers, slaves; anything but chosen. So, they spent 40 years in the wilderness trying to rediscover their true identity. – Renita Weems

Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell: Matthew 4:1-11 – “The wilderness is a profound teacher.” -Sr Katherine Flood, OP“There are beautiful and lasting gifts to be found in the wilderness places of our lives if we are brave enough to go there.” – Ruth Haley BarthThe Wilderness holds answers to more questions than we have yet learned to ask. – Nancy Wynne Newhall