"Amid the Storm" - Pentecost 11A

 Saint Matthew 14:22–33

It has always fascinated me what some people do in storms.  

Not the seemingly uncontrollable firestorms that have ravaged portions of the island of Maui leaving devastation behind that is heartbreakingly apocalyptic.  Or hurricanes that damage entire communities with high winds, heavy rains, and storm surges that leave large swaths of land uninhabitable for weeks, months, or in some cases even years. Or tornados which sweep in and sweep up homes and towns almost at a moment's notice.  I am talking about those “near-misses” that all of us have lived through, where the skies darken, television and radio programs are interrupted, and sirens blare warning us to take cover.

Some people do reasonable things like go into basements or storm cellars away from windows and anything else that might be sent flying by high winds but, at moments like these, instead of heading to the relative safety of the inner portions of our house my family would head to the front porch to watch the action.

While the Nelson family used to gather on the front porch to watch the storm in heavy weather our tenants would beat a hasty retreat to the southwest corner of the basement.  While they were doing push-ups off the ceiling at every streak of lightening, crack of thunder, and heavy gust of wind, my family was cheering every flash and boom and accusing anyone who jumped of having “coffee nerves.”  Occasionally they passed each other towels to wipe off wind-driven water.

A storm in the middle of the city can be approached in different ways but a storm in the middle of a lake is another matter.

What I am about to tell you may seem like an even bigger miracle than our Saviour walking on water but not once but twice in my college years friends conned me into a trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Northern Minnesota.

Yes, hard as it may be to believe once, twice even, in my life I really did “rough it.”

This was long before I discovered the real joys of five-star hotels, resorts, or cruise ships where “roughing it” became defined as any place where they did not serve drinks poolside and forced me to actually walk the ten or so steps to the bar to get one myself.

Perhaps what swore me off of such “outward bound” experiences were the mosquitoes the size of B-52's and flies that were even bigger. Besides living on dehydrated meals and the lack of even the most basic amenities that made life worth living, like fresh running water, or a shower. Besides all this was the time we were out in the middle of a lake in aluminum canoes when a classic Midwest thunderstorm suddenly came up. 

I remember paddling like crazy and promising everything I was, and had, and ever would be, to Jesus if I just arrived back at shore without becoming toast.  

In this small, never to be repeated in my life way, I can relate to the fear and trembling that the disciples must have experience in their wild and windy night on the sea.

Remember, the disciples' boat was a great deal like my canoe that had no sophisticated equipment - no radar, no sonar, no running lights, not even a horn.  They might have had a lantern but, then again, maybe not. They were out in the dark with the winds and waves against them and their strength beginning to fail.

By four o’clock in the morning they are cold, wet, exhausted, and afraid for their lives. By four in the morning, they have had about all they can take. They are wearied, battered, and seasick from the rough waves. Their hands are blistered from the struggle against the storm. It looks like it is curtains for them.

Just then one of the disciples looks up, and amidst the sea mist and clouds ... sees a figure coming closer on the dark waves.  As if the storm wasn’t scary enough, now they are all terrified by what looks like ghost walking on the whitecaps.1

Most preachers and teachers give the disciples tons of grief for misidentifying Jesus as if they could have done better. Nobody I have read on this subject had ever experienced what the disciples were experiencing. We’ve had two thousand years to get used to this scene.  Had we been there in a small boat, in a storm, in the darkness, who knows what we might have said.  At least, “It’s a ghost!” is repeatable in mixed company.

Peter too doesn’t escape the criticism of the arm -chair quarterbacks who have had over two centuries to review the tape.  They are all fairly certain that the last thing they would have done was want to get out of the boat.  Most are convinced they would have been begging Jesus to hurry and join them so that he could do something about the stormy weather.

For some inexplicable reason Peter wants to get out of the boat a go to Jesus instead of just letting Jesus come to him and, even more amazingly, Jesus lets him. Jesus says, in effect, “give it a try.”  Jesus doesn’t say, “No Peter! You’ll sink like a stone and drown!” Jesus says, “Alright!  If you want to. Give it a whirl!”

We know the rest. After Peter has taken a few steps, he begins to sink and here is where the traditional interpretation of this story leaves me cold.

In most Sunday School lessons and sermons that are not much better along with most paintings I have seen Jesus seems absolutely fine.  He is almost the “drip dry Saviour” totally unfazed by that is happening around him.  Wind and rain, not a problem as his hair is still perfectly quaffed and his clothes are not even damp.

When it comes to the moment of truth, when Peter is yelping, and thrashing, and desperately in need of some sort of rescue operation, in those traditional stories, sermons, and paintings, all Jesus does is gently, ever so gently, reaches out to an adoring Peter lifting him with the ease of a feather and placing him back in the boat without straining so much as a muscle.

But I don’t think that is what happened.  I think we underestimate the drama and risk of Jesus and Peter tussling there in the foaming deep.  

My belief comes not from extensive study of scripture or theology but from my college Red Cross water safety certification classes in order to be a lifeguard.

Those classes were made up of people on the swim team and when we went out to practice saving someone, we played rough. We made it as difficult as we could for him or her to stop our flailing and drag us back to the deck. 

The reason? Because we wanted to simulate a real drowning where the victim might have become so afraid that they took leave of their senses and fought back.

What I am telling you is that I know that if you are going to save someone in heavy seas you are going to have to throw yourself in after them and I believe that is exactly what Jesus did.  

I believe that Jesus dove in after Peter and grabbed him. In good Red Cross fashion, I believe he managed to get one arm around Peter’s chest, placed his free hand in the small of the disciple’s back, and pushed him to the surface.  Once that was accomplished, I believe, he dragged him back to the boat, and with the help of the other disciples hoisted himself and Peter back on board.

I also believe that when he asked, “Why did you doubt?” They both were dripping wet and breathing heavily.  “Why did you doubt?” Jesus sputtered.  “What got into you?” 

That’s the voice Peter heard over the wind and waves of the storm.  “Why did you doubt.  What got into you? Look! I am with you! Your friends are with you!”  That is the voice the disciples knew to be Jesus because he was with them, wet and exhausted, in the boat, in the storm.

Did you know that one of the earliest symbols of the church was a boat?  “The old image still resonates in the word we use for the central portion of a sanctuary, the nave. The Latin word for ship is navis.2  from which we derived nave because the traditional architectural nave resembles an upside-down ship. 

There are three in the rear of our sanctuary to remind us that we aren’t alone but that we have each other. We are surrounded by others who are sailing on with us.  “Some of us are rowing, some are bailing, some are pulling at the sail, some are praying.”3

Those who have been inspired by the message of Jesus, whether they are in or out of the church, are there for each other with a “we can make it, you will make it, I will be at your side during your storms” attitude which helps a lot because we know that we are not alone, never alone, but always in the same boat together.

It may not be Jesus’ voice exactly that we hear over the wind and waves, but it will be the voices of his people who dare to believe, in the face of all the evidence, that Christ knows what it is like to be with us in a storm tossed the boat as it makes its way through those moments in our life when the seas seem heavy and the weather is rough.

When we listen for those voices, the voices of our fellow followers, which may be drown out by the other noises of “earthquake, wind, and fire” that challenge our faith we’ll know that others are with us, trying their best to follow Jesus and be for us his “still small voice.”

Listening for those voices in our lives, I believe, we just might hear Jesus.

________________

1. Gennifer Benjamin Brooks, Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Teaching, (Louisville, KY: John Knox|Westminister Press 2020), pp. 222-234.

2.    Mark Ralls, “It’s Not a Ship; It’s a Boat,” Faith and Leadership, accessed August 12, 2023, https://faithandleadership.com/mark-ralls-its-not-ship-its-boat.

3.     John M. Buchanan, “Faith: When the Water Is Choppy and Your Boat Is Sinking.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, June 22, 2003.

________________

Sermon preached at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke

19 August 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-uaQaSoYXw&t=2668s

“Kindness and Compassion” - Pentecost 10A

Saint Matthew 14:13-21

58-year-old Shawn Warner – {a former Army paratrooper turned author} was sitting at a table in a Kroger store in Fort Worth, Texas, behind piles of copies of his {Young Adult} murder mystery, Leigh Howard and the Ghosts of Simmons-Pierce Manor, when two strangers approached him and began asking about the novel.

TikToker Jerrad “Red” Swearenjin, who filmed the interaction, said he started talking to Warner because the writer looked “super defeated”.

“When Red came up and talked to me, I was just so eager to talk to anybody at that point because there was a lull in my sales,” said Warner.1

Red posted his conversation along with a picture of the book on his Tik-Tok site and before long it was trending.  Then it was going viral.  

In an interview Mr. Warner was asked why he thought the video caught on, went viral?

Warner replied: “At its heart I think it was because this was an act of kindness that Red stopped by and talked to me when nobody else was.  It was pure kindness on his part.”2

Kindness, pure kindness, is what we have before us this morning in this familiar miracle story of Jesus showing compassion and kindness to a hungry crowd when he himself could have used some.

Word had just come to Jesus that John the Baptist, “Jesus’ cousin, herald, compatriot, minister, and friend John the Baptist, the one with whom he once danced together in their respective mothers' wombs, has had his unjust incarceration culminate in the death penalty. For greed and pleasure. John’s head has literally been served on a platter, his severed body picked up by friends and buried, and Jesus receives the news and wants to be alone.

What I am touched by this time in reading this story is not the gasping miracle of feeding 5,000 people but the deep mercy of it. Jesus hears the news about John and wants to be alone—a lesson in itself—but his grief does not close off for him the moments of compassion.”3

We are already told that he had spent the day curing their sick and now it was time to go home.  He had done all there was to do.  The hour was growing late when Jesus, looks up and notices that nobody has had anything to eat.  Perhaps it was his own stomach growling that made his aware of this fact but there they were all standing with the sun going down, far away from their homes and villages, with no prospect of anything to tide them over for even a little while.

This was not poor stewardship on their part.  It was not poor planning. Who knew that they would have been there all day?  At this moment they were not enjoying any sense of abundance.  They were hungry, needy, with very little {read: no} prospects of resolving the matter on their own.  I have no doubt that if the people could have provided for themselves, they would have.  

Jesus sees and not only offers compassion but kindness. Jesus feels for the people so strongly that Matthew uses a Greek word that literally means he got a knot in his stomach to convey his level of compassion.  Linguists tell us that “Kindness is when we do something good for someone because we want to, while compassion is when we do something good for someone because we feel they need it.”  

Jesus sees a need, feels it deep down in his gut, and he wants to do something about it.

We know the rest or, at least, we think we do.  

Familiar words launch us into the depths of Jesus’ kindness and compassion.  Words that open with an astute observation by his disciples.

That evening the disciples came to him and said, “It is already past time for supper, and there is nothing to eat here in the desert; send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy some food.”

But Jesus replied, “That isn’t necessary—you feed them!”

“What!” they exclaimed. “We have exactly five small loaves of bread and two fish!”4

Their reaction is reasonable.  While they may not be sure that the local restaurateurs, or the delis, or the 7-Elevens in the surrounding villages will have enough space or supplies to accommodate such a large number of people they are positive of one thing – they do not.

But nothing is going to stop Jesus’ kindness and compassion.  This is no fish tale, he is on a roll.  But to make this logistical nightmare work Jesus is going to need some help.

Jesus did not gather the loaves, multiply the loaves, and distribute the food to all those people by himself. He asked his disciples to bring what they could find. He took what the disciples found and brought to him, and Jesus blessed, broke, and gave it back to them. Christ’s disciples gave the food to the crowds – enough to satisfy everyone, and even more. Perhaps Jesus could have done all of that by himself . . . but that isn’t what he wanted. Jesus chose to perform this miracle with his disciples’ help.5

He could have done everything by himself, but he didn’t. He put the disciples to the task of . . . well . . . being disciples.  

There certainly could have been other ways of feeding the hungry that didn't involve so much work by the disciples. Jesus could have miraculously made the people's hunger pains disappear, but he wanted everyone in his entourage to help out. 

Have you ever thought about how much work it would be to distribute food to 5000 men, besides women and children -- and then to clean up the mess?

It would have been so much easier for the disciples if Jesus had done what they asked.

Sometimes, for divine miracles to occur, disciples may have to do a lot of work. Perhaps that is a difference between disciples and the crowds. While all received the benefit of the miracle; the disciples were asked to work and work hard to make it happen -- and then to clean up the mess.6 

Sometimes, for divine miracles to occur, disciples may have to do a lot of work.

By putting his disciples to work Jesus was not only allowing them to watch his kindness and compassion but making them participants in that kindness and compassion to others.

He was teaching them, firsthand, what it means to let your hearts be broken by the things they break the hearts of others.

In a wonderful essay in the latest edition of The Christian Century, Amy Atkins-Jones, wondered what Jesus thought as the bread and fish were being passed out. 

I wonder if anyone came by to knowingly squeeze his shoulder. I wonder if tears were shed or laughter filled the air. I wonder if Jesus ate in silence or simply listened in on the conversations floating around him. I wonder if anyone made sure he remembered to eat too.7

If they did, they understood what he was showing them about kindness and compassion.

Now they knew that the kindness and compassion of Christ was not about the head-knowledge of theology or philosophy.

The kindness and compassion of Christ was not about showing off our linguistic abilities with smooth words spoken at a safe distance.

The kindness and compassion of Christ was about someone in our moments of deepest hunger or darkest despair, taking us, and holding us, and loving us until we can see the light and feel filled again.

As bestselling author Shawn Warner said of his experience becoming a TikTok sensation from an encounter in a Texas Kroger.  “If there is a moral to the story it is just how a simple act of kindness can do so much.”

Remember, we may not be able to heal the world today, but we can begin with a voice of compassion, a heart of love, and an act of kindness.  And it will be no less than the same kind of love, compassion, and kindness, we have seen in Jesus Christ, our Lord.

________________

1.  Ella Creamer, “YA Author Shoots to No 1 on Amazon Bestseller List after Viral Tiktok Video,” The Guardian, July 7, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jul/07/ya-author-shoots-to-no-1-on-amazon-bestseller-list-after-viral-tiktok-video.

2.  Robin Baumgarten and Larry Potash, broadcast, WGN Morning News (Chicago, Illinois, August 3, 2023).

3.    Amey Victoria Atkins-Jones, “August 6, Ordinary 18a (Matthew 14:13–21),” The Christian Century, July 31, 2023, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/lectionary/august-6-ordinary-18a-matthew-14-13-21?code=LGiPq4Yw3L4AKienCYu6&utm_source=Christian%2BCentury%2BNewsletter

4. St. Matthew 14:15–17. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1972)]

5. Carla Pratt Keyes, “Enough for Everyone,” A Sermon for Every Sunday. July 28, 2020, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Carla-Pratt-Keyes-Feeding-5000.pdf.

6.     Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 14.13-21 Proper 13 - Year a,” Matthew 14.13-21, accessed September 4, 2023, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt14x13.htm.

7. Atkins-Jones, loc.cit.

Sermon preached at The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke

6 August 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgGJK5OAbm4&t=13s

“The Lord of Weeds and Wheat” - Pentecost 8A

 Saint Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

With today’s parable Jesus bids us into another foray into farming.

My understanding is limited to, at best, two weeks total visiting the Wester Farms in the furthers corner of northwest Iowa. Farms that have been in the family for over 100 years.

Even in that short time I learned a lot. 

Last week I told you absolutely everything I know about combines, those marvelous million-dollar machines whose sophistication is beyond the imagination of most city dwellers. 

But the most important thing I learned came one evening while I was taking in the “amber waves of grain” enjoying the “bright golden haze on the meadow” and admiring “corn that was as high as an elephant's eye.”  I commented about how wonderful everything was and Lowell’s brother-in-law reminded me that is one thing for a city fella like me to visit a farm but it quite another thing to have to own one and work one.

He’ right of course.  

Farmers have to be almost everything all at once.  

They are, first and foremost, running a business which sometimes has thousands upon thousands of dollars passing through it annually.  They have to be crop managers, knowing what crops to plant, where and when.  They have to be mechanics for their equipment and carpenters for their buildings.  They may be the last of what used to be known as “jack-of-all trades.”  Most of all, they have to be hard workers.

While modern equipment may have made things easier, they still have to know how to use their farm equipment and when to use it properly.  Farming takes no small amount of skill and manual labour and it used to take more.

For most of his life Lowell’s father farmed before all the “bells and whistles” came to be.  Even though he planted, plowed, and cultivated before G.P.S. was invented his rows were straight, and true, and almost weedless.  How did he achieve this?

Lowell told me that while a cultivator, which even city folks like us can find in a super small scale at a home centre, which when hooked behind the tractor, could uproot the weeds between the rows something had to be done with the weeds that grew up between the crops.  So, every so often, the Wester children were called upon to go out and “walk beans.”

“How do you walk a bean?” I asked.  “Do you put a little collar on them and then place the on the ground to see where they go? Do they romp? Can you tell them to sit and stay and when you say ‘Here, bean, bean, bean’ do they rush to you?”

He looked at me like I was being an idiot. (Which I was!)

Remembering that these were not green beans, or any of the kind of beans we are used to seeing at the grocery store, but rather soybeans, I asked him “How did you know the difference?” To which he replied, “practice.”

That one could only be good at weeding between the bean plants by hours of practicing the task in the field brings us finally, and quite nicely to Jesus’ parable.

Apparently, this farmer did not have a family of children whom he could conscript into walking his crops for him until it was too late, and the weeds got totally out of hand.

What he did have, however, was a band of servants whose unrivalled enthusiasm was only exceeded by their lack of knowledge.  They are going to get in there and rip out all those weeds.  Without any practice they are going to get in there and make everything right.  With who knows how much or how little knowledge of what is or is not a weed, they are going to restore their master’s garden into a pristine version of the garden of Eden.

Suddenly this simple parable weeds and wheat is beginning to hit close to home because we know who we are. We know who are weeds and who is the wheat.  Or, at least we think we do.

Like the servants, who see the weeds and want to pull them up, we would really like to get rid of all the weeds—all of the things we see in people we believe are not like us—the theology that doesn’t fit with our own enlightened understandings, the hypocrisy of people claiming God but excluding neighbor, or the hypocrisy of judging those who exclude, and all the rest. Often, we are inclined to focus our energy on pulling up all of the dangerous or questionable expressions of faith, narrowing the circle, and ensuring the only people representing God and the church have passed the proper litmus test. And these days it seems like we have a litmus test for every theological, social, moral, and ethical question.1

Surprisingly, the problem with our certainty, as to who is and who is not a weed, was pointed out by Tim Joyce, a master gardener who is also one of the very fine stable of weather forecasters on WGN. 

Last Saturday, in his gardening segment he said: “While a weed is hard to define, at its basics it would be the wrong plant in the wrong place.” Then Joyce went on to say, “If you ask a hundred different gardeners about what makes a weed, you'll get about 100 different answers.”2

It is almost human nature to try and sort things out for God.  It is a constant temptation for us to try and figure out who is doing the will of God and who is not. But there are 100 different answers to this question.

It is a constant struggle not to give into the notion that we can figure out who will be welcomed into God’s kingdom and who will not.  We think we know who is a weed and who is a wheat in this life and Jesus plainly tells us we don’t.

We are like city folk in a soybean field. 

If you sent us, you and I, Chicagoans, out into a soybean field who knows what we’d do.  We’d have no idea what to look for? We would have no idea what was a weed and what was a soybean? If we would have joined the Wester children in walking beans all poor Roy probably would have had, at the end of the day, was a field that looked like a return to the dust bowl days of the 30's.  Our inability to tell a plant from a weed would probably leave nothing behind but a barren landscape. Face it, most of us bring as much skill to farming as Oliver Wendell Douglas did on “Green Acres.”

So, Jesus is telling us, let’s leave this sorting business up to God who has this strange ability to take people who we would have surely seen as weeds and see them as, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson “a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”

The Bible is full of these characters.  They are almost countless in number, and today we have a prime example before us in our reading from the Hebrew Scripture.

We certainly would have pulled up guys like Jacob and thrown him into the compost bin of history. A wonderful Pastor Friend of mine labelled him as “something of a heel, someone who is not very admirable, someone who does questionable things for their own benefit.”3 In other words, a weed.

When we find him, Jacob is on the lam. And if we were God we would probably say: “Serves you right.  All the troubles in your life you have brought on yourself so that’s it! Good riddance.”

Much to our surprise, and Jacob’s, God comes to him when he is tired, worn out and using a rock instead of a pillow.

The Pastor for Youth Ministry where I worshipped regularly, The Rev’d Rocky Suplinger, wrote in a devotional once:

It occurs to me that perhaps the Lord is present in that place not simply in spite of Jacob's ignorance but because of it. Had Jacob been looking for a holy truck stop, I wonder if he would have wandered to some other locale. Maybe there would be a big mountain in view. Maybe a babbling brook the shores of which would be suitable for meditating. Instead, Jacob just needs a place to rest himself. He's not thinking of holiness, or even of God, as he beds down with his rock pillow. And that is how God finds him. Because Jacob wasn't looking.4

What God offers Jacob was a way out in the vision of a ladder.  The inspiration of the hymn, “We are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.”  Did you know that there is such a thing as a Jacob’s ladder?

I was badgering the guys in the bible study I used to participate in at Fourth Presbyterian for an application for this sermon and a Navy veteran told me that the classic rope ladder that we have all seen in movies and perhaps in person is called a Jacob’s ladder because it has to be lowered down to you.  You can only toss it so high. It has to be lowered from above.

Upon further research I also found that there is a plant called a Jacob’s ladder, that was originally a wildflower but has now been welcomed for its beauty into human gardens.

Strangely enough, as Tim Joyce noted in his piece on weeds on the Morning News, “Many things folks thought a hundred years ago were beautiful and ornamental and tried to cultivate are now considered to be weeds.”5

You could probably finish this sermon without my help and the end is simply this.

When we stop looking for the weediness in others God finds us.  

Even out in the field when we are seeking to root out all the weeds of the world, God is seeking us. When we are at worse, and yes, even when we are at our best, God is seeking us not to weed us out but to redeem us.

God doesn’t care if we are a weed or some wheat.

God doesn’t care if we are a saint or a scoundrel.

God doesn’t care if we are on the lam or following the Lamb.

It all doesn’t seem to matter to God, and neither should it matter to us.

The field is not ours it’s God’s.  And if we decide that we are the ones whose job it is to spend our time identifying and removing the weeds ... we will forget to see the goodness of God being revealed in our midst.

So, heads up, bean walkers! Heads up! 

Now you know as much about farming as I do. But I, we, do know a little about the farmer, who calls us to live in the goodness, and mercy, and second chances of God, right here and right now.

________________

1. Cortney Allen Crump, “‘On Being Wheat’,” A Sermon for Every Sunday, July 17, 2023, https://www.asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Courtney-Allen-Crump-Wheat-and-Weeds.pdf. 

2.  Tim Joyce, “WGN Weekend Morning News,” broadcast (Chicago, Illinois, July 15, 2023).

3. Erin Bouman, “Take Hold.” Sermon preached at Irving Park Lutheran Church in Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, July 16, 2017.

4. Rocky Supinger, Fourth Church Devotions. July 18, 2017. Accessed July 18, 2017. http://www.fourthchurch.org/devotions/2017/071817.html.

5.     Joyce, loc.cit.

Sermon preached at The Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Luke

23 July 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjD4gGFKa_o&t=2665s

“What Kind of Sower is This” - Pentecost 7a

 

 Saint Matthew 13:1-9 & 18-23

A couple of falls ago Lowell arranged for me to take a ride in his brother-in-law’s combine at his farm in northwest Iowa and I’ll never forget the first words out of Gerald’s mouth when I climbed aboard.  “Don’t touch anything!” he said.

I kept my hands in my lap and my mouth shut for fear of demonstrating my agricultural ignorance as we harvested corn in this marvel of modern machinery.

It had a steering wheel but was guided by the aid of GPS that told it to turn when the end of a row was reached.  Next to the steering wheel was a joystick that controlled much of what else went on in the giant machine.  And next to the joystick was a computer monitor that continually kept track of not only how much seed had been planted or crops harvested but the soil conditions for both seedtime and harvest. At planting, the fertility of the soil would be monitored so that the seeds would be placed in perfect rows at just the right distance apart for an optimum yield. 

It was amazing!

It is also a stunning contrast to the fellow, you could hardly call him a farmer, who is just flinging seeds here and there in today’s parable from Jesus, who was, by the way, not a farmer, but a carpenter by trade.

This guy may be the worse seed sower in the history of time but at least he is enthusiastic about it.  He has turned seed sowing into a party.

He turned his task into a party by just flinging seeds this way and that apparently caring little about where the seed landed or the condition of the soil.  Instead of riding in a machine that carefully calibrates the placement of a seed to a fraction of an inch this fellow is walking around throwing handfuls of seed into the air.  And he doesn’t seem to care where the seeds land.  Good soil or bad soil. Rocky ground or rich ground. He doesn’t even care that the seeds that are thrown on the path probably will never grow.  He’s just having a great time sowing seeds, or really, just throwing them everywhere.

Jesus must have been crazy telling a story like this in a subsistence level economy like his. His people were even less likely to waste seeds than we are.  If there was any farmer listening to Jesus’ parable back then they would have said, “Dude! This guy is crazy. He’s wasting seeds!”

There is a beautiful icon of the sower and the seed parable from the Order of Saint Benedict of Collegeville, Minnesota, created by Aidan Hart.  Jesus is the sower in a plain shirt and blue jeans. A woven basket hangs around his neck, filled with seeds as he bends slightly forward scattering seeds.1

If you look closely some of the seeds aren’t even landing within the boarder of the picture.  How wonderful of the artist to portray Jesus as a day labourer, in t-shirt and jeans, working in a field.  In so doing he reminds us who this parable is really about.

We want to make it about us.  

The truth is that many of us have that immediate reaction upon hearing this parable: we attempt to self-measure and categorize what type of soil we are, because all of us want to be among the good soil. We hear of God’s word being scattered on the rocky ground—springing up quickly with joy, but not having the roots to last—and we think, “surely not I, Lord.” We hear of God’s word being scattered among the thorns—growing among the lure of wealth and the cares of the world and eventually being taken in by them—and we think, “Surely not I, Lord.”2

 “And then there are those who proudly proclaim, “I am good soil!” And they're the people who kind of get on your nerves.”3

When hearing this parable our temptation has always been to ask, “What kind of soil am I” when we might be better off asking ourselves, “What kind of sower am I?”

Our temptation is we want to control the reward cycle.  We want to know exactly what kinds of seed to plant in exactly the right places and we want to know where and when to plant it.  We want to take over Jesus’ seed sowing business and get it down the science of a modern-day farmer. 

But Jesus keeps telling us that since you can’t predict just how or where the seed you’re sowing is going to fall, or when or if it is going to produce, scatter it wherever you can and hope for the best.

Unless you are a farmer whose livelihood depends on bumper crops of seeds well planted and carefully harvested, don’t waste time counting the seeds or trying to figure out what kind of seed you are.  

Understand that this parable is about God who, revealed in Jesus, is wastefully gracious.  God just wants to scatter that grace all over the place and he wants us to help.  He wants us to toss God’s grace around, too.

Jesus wants us to understand that God’s grace and mercy is for everyone, everywhere.

God's grace and mercy lands on everything, everywhere.

God's grace and mercy is for people who are spiritually tone deaf.

God's grace and mercy is for people who know their bible backwards and forward and for those who have never cracked the thing open.

God's grace and mercy is for the spiritually eager and for those who are confused.

God's grace and mercy is for those who are wayward.

God's grace and mercy is for people who are parts of other religions and for people who have no religion at all.

God's grace and mercy is for people who are broken.

God's grace and mercy is for everybody.4

Sometimes in our sophistication we make things maddeningly confusing.  

We want to place our transactional way of seeing things — You do this, and you get that – on top of what Jesus is plainly and simply telling us and make things more complicated than they really are.

We want to bring our scriptural scholarship into understanding of the simplest things.

The fact is whether you are a 21st century farmer onboard a million-dollar combine using the best instruments that modern day science can offer or just someone flinging seeds into the air trusting that some will land on fertile soil both are still hoping that in the end some of those seeds will spout and grow and return a harvest.

All Jesus is asking us to do is make sure that there is nobody who has missed out in the power that is in this gospel to transform all human life.

God just wants to scatter God’s power and grace all over the place and God wants us to help.  He wants us to toss God’s grace around, too.

He wants us to fling it, throw it with a mighty arm. Cast God’s grace freely, far and wide.  Help others and ourselves discover the real joy and fulfilment that comes when we realize that God’s love is abundant, it never runs out, and there is always more than enough.

A sower went out to sow and what was sown was God’s abundant mercy and grace. That’s it. “Let anyone who has ears, listen.”

________________

1.  Mihee Kim-Kort, “Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture,” Intersections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year A, 3 (January 2020): 152–54.

2. Matthew Helms, “Sown Freely.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, July 16, 2017.

3. James D. Howell, “What Kind of Sower is This?” Sermon preached at Myers Park United Methodist Church, Charlotte, N.C., July 16, 2017.

4.    ibid.

Sermon preached at The Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Luke

 16 July 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoeMp8EIRpc&t=2399s

"To Finally Decide" - Pentecost 6A

Romans 17:15-25a and Saint Matthew 11:16-19; 25-30 

Way back in the 1960's, in the land before time, there was an American Rock Band called the Loving Spoonful – not plural spoonfuls but singular, spoonful.  They described themselves as having a “good time” sound designed to take some of the edginess of the music in the mid-60's.  

My guess is that they wouldn’t have described their songs as being important but rather fun, foot-taping, and most of all singable.  Their music also had a certain ear-worm quality about it as you will no doubt discover after I suggest that one of their songs made for a perfect introduction to today’s lessons.  

I played it for Thursday’s online Bible study group, and it received a reaction that could only be described as tepid.  But, undaunted, I still contend that the lyrics ask an important question:

Did you ever have to make up your mind?

You pick up on one and leave the other behind

It's not often easy and not often kind

Did you ever have to make up your mind?

Did you ever have to finally decide?

And say yes to one and let the other one ride

There's so many changes and tears you must hide

Did you ever have to finally decide?

Today’s gospel and our little peek into the indecisive mind of Saint Paul in our readings gives us a glimpse in the lives of communities and individuals who are having a hard time “finally deciding.”

Jesus is looking out at a people who are having a hard time deciding what they want. I love the way The Living Bible paraphrases Jesus observation by taking it out of the past and plopping it right down in our present.

“What shall I say about this nation? These people are like children playing, who say to their little friends,  ‘We played a wedding and you weren’t happy, so we played a funeral but you weren’t sad.’ For John the Baptist doesn’t even drink wine and often goes without food, and you say, ‘He’s crazy.’  And I, the Messiah, feast and drink, and you complain that I am ‘a glutton and a drinking man and hang around with the worst sort of sinners!’ But brilliant men like you can justify your every inconsistency!”1

 Isn’t that us sometimes?  We are inconsistent. We can’t make up our mind. 

We say we want strong leaders but not too strong.  We say we want leaders who will protect our rights but not infringe on them.  We say we want leaders who will give us direction but only if that is in the way we think we want to go.  On a national level, the only thing we are certain of is that we don’t want a leader who calls us to sacrifice.

We say we want leaders who bring youthful energy, but they should have loads of experience.  We say we want leaders who should be charismatic but not overbearing.  

Sometimes we want a John the Baptist in our midst, calling people to account, reminding them of their sins and need to repent.  We want that for other’s but for ourselves we want Jesus, we want grace, we want a word about a God who just loves us.  Jesus was right we are absolutely brilliant in justifying our every inconsistency until it comes back to bite us, as it did for Saint Paul in today reading.  

If Jesus is talking about communal inconsistencies Saint Paul is beating himself up over his own, personal inconsistencies. 

“My own behaviour baffles me.”2 he says. “I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.”3

Saint Paul is talking to himself and not in a good way.

The best explanation of what is going on with the poor guy comes not from some great, heavy, deep, theological tome, but from W. Timothy Gallway’s book, The Inner Game of Tennis. 4

He calls it the conflict between Self 1 and Self 2.  Self 1 is the thinker and Self 2 is doer.

So, in tennis Self 1 is saying “Keep eye on the ball.  Hold your racket straight. Be ready to charge the net or stay back. Move your feet.”  The ball comes over the net, looks easy, and you completely flub it.  (Think of either the Cubs or White Sox at any point in almost any game.)

Then if Self 2 fails in what it is trying to do Self 2's judgmental self-talk begins.  “You weren’t watching the ball. You weren’t moving your feet.  You rolled your racket over again. Suddenly, one’s play gets effected. It is the judgmental, self getting into the mind of the doing self. 

Muscles tighten. There is more thinking, less doing. Stokes suffer, points are lost.  It’s “game, set, match” and you come away thinking that you're such a failure that you might as well give up tennis and try something else. Beanbag maybe?

Now if such havoc can be reeked on one’s emotions by a simple game of tennis, golf, or even pickle ball, think of how much more damaging such self-talk is to the life of faith.  One might even conclude with Saint Paul: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this?”

It is then that Saint Paul answers his own question by reminding himself who he belongs to.  “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”5

What he is doing is reminding himself that he has been yoked to Christ.  Paul is reminding , reminding us, that joined Christ and joined to each other we will be able to manage any load that is placed upon us.  More important of all we are being told that Christ wants to share that load with us.  

The wonder of the Gospel for me is not my desire to be yoked to Christ but his desire to be yoked to me. 

 According to William Barclay in one of his famous bible commentaries, "there is a legend that Jesus made the best ox-yokes in all Galilee, and that from all over the country men came to his carpenter's shop to buy the best yokes that skill could make.”6

If that legend isn’t true, it should be.

While we are dancing around trying to figure out what it is that we want Jesus is telling us that joined to him we may not always get what we want but we will get what we need.  

Yoked to him we can be united not divided from one another.

Yoked to Jesus our meagre efforts at unity are redeemed.  

Yoked to Jesus our struggles bring us closer to him and closer to each other.

Yoked to Jesus our smallest efforts become part of God’s new creation.

Yoked to Jesus, we see each other as equals. We see each other as sisters and brothers.

Yoked to Jesus we discover that there is someone by our side, tethered to us to help us bear our burdens and carry our loads.

Yoked to Jesus we will hear no less than Almighty God say, “become my yoke mate, and learn how to pull the load by working beside me and watching how I do it. The heavy labor will seem lighter if you let me help you with it.”7

I can’t guarantee that yoked to Jesus your tennis, game, or golf, or pickle ball game will improve but I can guarantee in those moments of confusion and chaos, when it it hard to make up your mind, you’ll know that through it all, no matter what, God is right next to you, by your side, yoked to you.  

And for now, we have to make up our mind that this is just going to have to be enough.

________________

1.  Saint Matthew 11:16-19. (TLB) [TLB= The Living Bible. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers Inc., 1971]

2. Romans 7:15. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English  (London, ENG: Bles, 1968).

3.  Romans 7:17-20. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, in The Message: The New Testament Psalms and Proverbs (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1998).

4. W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis.(New York: Random House, 1974).

5.  Romans 7: 24.  (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

6. William Barkley, The Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Matthew, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1957), p. 12.

7. Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996)

Sermon preached at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke, 9 July 2023.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMZCxd6T6Yw&t=3428s

"Inclusion" - Pentecost 5A

 

Saint Matthew 10:40-42

This may come as a surprise to you but today, July 2nd, is the day that John Adams, really believed was the date on which colonial independence should have been celebrated.

He firmly believed that formal separation from England took place when “the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia voted to approve a motion for Independence put forth by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia” on July 2nd, 1776.

We will celebrate on Tuesday because it was not until July 4 that the “actual Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress.”

Interesting enough the “city of Philadelphia, where the Declaration was signed, waited until July 8 to celebrate, with a parade and the firing of guns. The Continental Army under the leadership of George Washington didn’t learn about it until July 9.”1

Adams not only had strong feelings about when the celebration should take place but how independence should be celebrated. He wanted more than just the firing of a few rounds into the air. 

Writing to his wife Abigail on July 3 he outlined what became the formula for our celebrations.

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shows, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.2

You can almost hear him singing these words as he did in the play 1776.  

We know that Adams and the other members of the First Continental Congress were not perfect.  A majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence ... owned slaves.  Four of the first five presidents of the United States were slave owners.3 And while “Thomas Jefferson called slavery a “moral depravity” and a “hideous blot,” he continued to hold human beings as property his entire adult life.”4

Flawed humans can still aspire to high ideals, yet it seems that increasingly we have become “a battleground of ideologies, ignorance in constant combat with ignorance, where the loudest, shrillest rancour wins the day? When did patriotism get whittled down to nothing more than anger, heady feelings about wars and weapons, and an edgy bias against people who are different?”5

In a wonderful Chrstian Century article Lutheran Pastor Diane Roth, gave me an entirely new perspective, when she wrote:

There is something that I skipped right over in this passage. It’s that very first phrase, “whoever welcomes you welcomes me.” Why did I skip over that very first phrase, and what does it mean?

Jesus says these words to his disciples—his particular group of disciples in the first century...I think that I blinked right over the phrase the first time because, truthfully, I don’t think of myself as being welcomed so much as being the one who welcomes.

But Jesus doesn’t imagine it this way. He doesn’t imagine that any of his disciples is in the center of society. They would not be so much extending hospitality as they would be receiving it. Jesus imagines his disciples on the edges of society, holding this great treasure, {of the Gospel} but also needing welcome: a cup of water, a square meal, a roof over their heads.6

 Do you remember his instructions to them when he sent them out on their first missionary excursion?  J. B. Phillips paraphrases Jesus words this way: “Don’t take any gold or silver or even coppers to put in your purse; nor a knapsack for the journey, nor even a change of clothes, or sandals or a staff...”7

Jesus is turning them into a bunch of Blanche DuBois’ and making them “dependent on the kindness of strangers.”

Now, when they offer a cup of cold water to someone in need, they will know what it is like to be on the receiving end.  When they offer help to someone who is hungry, poor, with holes in their shoes they will know what it like to be that person.  

They will know what it is like to be included rather than excluded.

We often forget that.  

Think of moments when you have been included. In a family or a chosen family of friends.  At school when a teacher appreciated your gifts and brought out the best in you.  In a community where, no matter how eccentric you might be, people still love you and care about you.  Think of all those times when you have been dependent on the kindness of strangers.

Yes, there will always be people who exclude you.  There will always be people who say your too old or too young.  There will always be people who look for some flaw and chose to exploit it.  There will always be people who will exclude you because of your race, or creed, or orientation, or ethnic background.  

Jesus had something to say to the disciples about this too: “Any city or home that doesn’t welcome you—shake off the dust of that place from your feet as you leave.”8 “Shrug your shoulders and be on your way. You can be sure that on Judgment Day they’ll be mighty sorry—but it’s no concern of yours now.”9

We have a privilege the early disciple were just learning about. We have power. We have power to welcome others – or to turn our backs. But there is only one right way. It is Jesus' way. It is the way of inclusion.

Dr. Michael Bos is the wonderful Senior Minister of the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City.  

Marble’s most famous preacher was Norman Vincent Peale of The Power of Positive Thinking fame.  While Peale may have advocated seeing the possible in everyone, like the founding fathers of our nation, that positivity did not extend to everybody.

But times change, pastors come and go, some more slowly than others, so when he retired in after a relatively modest 52 years, a new Senior Minister was called who had some radical ideas.  One of those was to open the church up, to extend that cup of cold water to all people.

Peale’s successor, Dr. Arthur Caliandro, started to welcome people who weren’t just “white, bright, and polite” but as Dr. Bos remembered, he led the cause to make Marble a welcoming, and affirming, and inclusive community.  “And, because of that, there were people who left and not a small number. While he was including others those who left were finding a way of excluding him.  But” said Dr. Bos, “he was the embodiment of the words. ‘I’d rather be excluded for who I include, than be included for who I exclude.’”10

I think I just might say that again so we all can drink it in. “I’d rather be excluded for who I include, than be included for who I exclude.”

A cup of cold water, a warm welcome, given in the name of Jesus will bring with it a reward to not only the giver but the receiver as well.  It is a simple act of inclusion, and that water of welcome will be so sweet, and so refreshing, and so renewing that it will bring with it a moment where a real blessing can be enjoyed by all, both receiver and giver. 

“I’d rather be excluded for who I include, than be included for who I exclude.”  Inclusion. It is the way of Jesus and so it must be our way too. 

_______________

1. Valerie Strauss, “Why July 2nd Is Really America's Independence Day,” July 7, 2015, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/john-adams-was-right-2-july-is-really-americas-independence-day-10361356.html.

2. Jessie Kratz, “Pieces of History,” Pieces of History (blog) (The National Archives, July 2, 2014), https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2014/07/02/john-adams-vision-of-july-4-was-july-2/#:~:text=The%20Second%20Day%20of%20July,of%20Devotion%20to%20God%20Almighty.

3. Mark Maloy, “The Founding Fathers Views of Slavery,” American Battlefield Trust, June 20, 2023, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/founding-fathers-views-slavery#:~:text=A%20majority%20of%20the%20signers,the%20United%20States%20were%20slaveowners.

4. “Thomas Jefferson and Slavery,” Monticello, accessed June 30, 2023, https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/jefferson-slavery/#:~:text=Thomas%20Jefferson%20called%20slavery%20a,property%20his%20entire%20adult%20life.

5. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say July 5? 5th after Pentecost.” (blog) (Myers Park United Methodist Church, July 3, 2010), http://revjameshowell.blogspot.com/2010/07/jesus-and-july-4.html.

6. Diane Roth, “July 2, 2023: 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time,” The Christian Century, June 17, 2020, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/june-28-ordinary-time-13a-matthe

7. St. Matthew 10:9-10. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, in The New Testament in Modern English (London, England: HarperCollins, 2000).

8. St. Matthew 10:14. (TLB) [TLB= The Living Bible. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Foundation. 1971]

9. Saint Matthew 10:15. (MESSAGE: Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1995).'

10. Michael Bos, “Free to Be Me.’ Sermon preached at the Marble Collegiate Church of New York City on June 25, 2023.

Sermon preached at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke

2 July 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k19w4IOAScc