Sermon – Matthew 13.1-9, 18-23, P10, YA, July 16, 2017

Tags

business, evangelism, extravagent, fear, fertile, Good News, Jesus, listen, parable, seed, soil, sow, sower

I don’t know about you, but this gospel lesson always makes me a little nervous.  As soon as I hear about the different types of soil where seed is sown, I start to get paranoid.  I think of the countless times when I did not understand what the kingdom of God was about, or what God was trying to teach me, and how the evil one started clouding my thoughts.  Or, I think about that those moments where I have been filled with new fervor for God, only to get distracted or anxious, and lose that sense of intimacy with God.  And the good Lord knows that I have been more than distracted by the cares of the world and the lures or preoccupation around money and lost touch with my faith.  Of course, by the time I get through that litany of doubt and self-loathing, I feel a sense of doom.  I will never work hard enough to be good soil!

The good news is this parable is not about me or you.  At least not in the way we think.  Whenever scholars talk about this text, the text is referred to as the parable of the sower – not the parable of the soils.[i]  By getting distracted by all of the ways we do not measure up or the ways in which our faith is sometimes shallow, unsophisticated, or self-centered, we miss the point altogether.  This is about the nature of Christ – the original sower of the Good News, and the expectations of how the disciples will be similar sowers.  To understand what that means, we need to let go of our anxiety about our soil, and hone in on the nature of the sower.  You see, the sower might recognize that three-fourths of soil is not fertile.  The sower even confesses that of fertile soil, the yield will be different – some hundred-fold, some sixty, and some thirty.

Being aware of this math, you would think the sower would develop a strategic plan, assessing how to maximize productivity, avoid burnout, and get the best return.  That is certainly how modern farmers would go about things.  I learned this week of a new machine produced by a major farming company that has perfected the art of planting seeds.  The planter slows down the seed through the use of a small puff of air.  That puff of air makes sure the seed does not roll where it should not, and perfectly lands where the farmer intends.  The machine is a genius development through science.  And that machine is nothing like the sower in Jesus’ parable.[ii]  Despite all the data – that three out of four seeds will fail to thrive, and of those seeds planted in good soil, the productivity will vary in size, the sower casts seeds in all of the soil.  The sower takes his time, his money, his knowledge and, based on our standards, wastes it.  The sower just throws seed everywhere, letting whatever happens happen.  The sower knows that each seed will do something – whether be feed for birds, or experience the joy of new faith, or even get close to growth before distraction.  But the sower does not care.  The sower seeds with abandon.  The sower sows with reckless extravagance.

I am not sure I am capable of sowing like the sower sows in this parable.  I think about Jesus encouraging his disciples to be recklessly extravagant sowers, and instead, I think my method would be a little more like what Barbara Brown Taylor imagines.  Her modern retelling of Jesus’ parable goes something like this:

“Once upon a time a sower went out to sow.  And as he sowed some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came along and devoured them.  So he put his seed pouch down and spent the next hour or so stringing aluminum foil all around his field.  He put up a fake owl he ordered form a garden catalog and, as an afterthought, he hung a couple of traps for the Japanese beetles.

Then he returned to his sowing, but he noticed some of the seeds were falling on rocky ground, so he put his seed pouch down again and went to fetch his wheelbarrow and shovel.  A couple of hours later he had dug up the rocks and was trying to think of something useful he could do with them when remembered his sowing and got back to it, but as soon as he did he ran right into a briar patch that was sure to strangle his little seedlings.  So he put his pouch down again and looked everywhere for the weed poison but finally decided just to pull the thorns up by hand, which meant that he had to go back inside and look everywhere for his gloves.

Now by the time he had the briars cleared it was getting dark, so the sower picked up his pouch and his tools and decided to call it a day.  That night he fell asleep in his chair reading a seed catalog, and when he woke the next morning he walked out into his field and found a big crow sitting on his fake owl.  He found rocks he had not found the day before and he found new little leaves on the roots of the briars that had broken off in his hands.”[iii]

This version does not work as well as Jesus’ parable.  In fact, this version captures our resistance to the kind of extravagance Jesus is promoting.  We like control, measured actions, and predictable results.  We like efficiency, productivity, and practicality.  Just look at any church that has been planted in the last twenty years.  The Diocese conducts a study, location is considered for months, research is done to ensure maximum yield before a new church is ever begun.  Or even look at our own evangelism efforts.  We are strategically considering neighborhoods that are near the church, where people may be looking for a church home, or how people may fit in with certain demographics before we spend capital on evangelism campaigns.  And all of those efforts are smart business.[iv]

But that is not the kind of business that the sower in the parable is about.  The sower is about throwing the Good News everywhere.  The implication for us is clear.  The sower’s example means that we too need to be extravagant with our sowing of the Good News.  We cannot look around our neighborhood and say, “I mean, he already has a church, or she clearly had a bad experience with the church, or we’re not even that close, so….”  We tend to wait for months to ask someone to even come to a movie or a fall festival, let alone church.  What if they say no?  What if they avoid us afterwards?  What if they assume we’re pushy?  What if they ask me a question I can’t answer?  We get so caught up in “what ifs” that we are like a sower standing frozen with our pouches.  Instead, Jesus’ sower is standing beside us whispering, “Go ahead.  Throw the seeds anyway.”  The sower not only tells us to not be afraid of talking to others about our faith and the Good News of God in Christ, the sower tells us that we should not care – not care if the soil is fertile or what the yield will be.  In knowing the yield will be limited to 25% of those approached, the sower says we should just throw that seed, that Good News all over the place, because ultimately, what the seed does, or how the soil is, is not our responsibility.  Our responsibility is to sow the seed.

The sower in our story encourages us to be another way.  The sower says, “Hey you, on the path, in the thorns, in the shallow soil, and in the succulent soil, I want to share something with you.  Hey you with birds, thorns, rocks, and nutrition creeping in, I want to spend some time with you even though it may be a total waste of time.  I want to listen to you, I want to reflect with you on where God is acting in your life, I want to tell you why I got up today and drug myself to this awesome place called Hickory Neck.”  I know the work sounds scary and even illogical.  I know even attempting to sow seeds may feel like a task you are just ill-equipped to do – or you may assume is the work of the clergy.  But let me leave you with this:  you came here today because this community means something to you.  You came here because you are fed here, challenged here, loved here.  Why wouldn’t you want to invite someone into that wonderful experience?  Why are you clutching onto a pouch of seeds that could mean new life for someone else?  Jesus has already warned us that the return will feel low.  But you never know when you are going to encounter that soil that produces not just thirty- or sixty-fold, but sometimes a hundred-fold.  In fact, scholars tell us that those numbers indicate an unimaginably large amount of productivity.  A good amount of produce would have been seven-fold.[v]  Jesus promises much more return!  We cannot control how our Good News will be received.  Our invitation is to be as illogically, recklessly, extravagantly gracious and loving sowers as our loving Lord who could not care less about the results.  So grab your seeds, and let’s go!

[i] Barbara Brown Taylor, The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons on the Gospel of Matthew (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 26.

[ii] Rolf Jacobson, “SB549 – Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 15),” Sermon Brainwave Podcast, July 8, 2017, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=911 on July 10, 2017.

[iii] Taylor, 28-29.

[iv] Theodore J. Wardlaw, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 3 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 237.

[v] Talitha J. Arnold, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 3 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 236.

On Roots and Relationships…

Tags

connection, God, Jesus, parable, relationship, roots, strength, tree, weeds, wheat, yoga

Photo credit:  www.arborcentre.co.uk/tree-root-subsidence-damage.html

I recently started a new yoga class.  Over the years I have learned that every yoga teacher has their own language and philosophy about the practice.  I had a teacher who used to tell us that when we are feeling discomfort, we shouldn’t label it as “pain” but “awareness.”  We had tons of fun talking about how much awareness I was having as I labored with my first child.  I had another teacher who was also a priest.  Instead of saying that he honored the “light” in each of us, he would say, “I honor the Christ in each of you.”  Anytime a teacher talks about honoring the light in me now, my brain automatically translates it to “Christ.”

This new teacher has added another phrase to my list of favorites – an image, actually.  Like many other teachers, when we practice “tree” pose she has us imagine our legs as having roots that extend deeply into the earth, grounding us.  But she added another element to that image.  As we stood there – young, old, black, white, small, and large – she asked us to imagine our roots intermingling with one another’s roots.  She went on to explain how we are stronger with our interwoven roots than we are on our own.  I immediately regarded the people in that room differently – wondering what their stories were, what brought them to that room, and what about our differences and similarities might make us stronger – what might make our community stronger.

I left that room feeling a sense of embrace and comradery.  I felt the power of all the students in the class carrying me through the day.  But in the weeks since then, and especially in light of our current political climate, I have found myself wondering what it might mean that my roots are interwoven with those who are not like me at all.  What if my roots are tied in with those who disagree with me, who marginalize those I support, and who seem to be working against what I stand for?

The realization reminded me of Jesus’ parable of the weeds (Matthew 13.24-30).  A man sows good seed in his field, but in the night, an enemy sows weeds among the good seed.  The man’s workers want to know if they should pull the weeds, but the farmer knows pulling the weeds will destroy the wheat.  So they must wait until the harvest time to separate the good from the evil.  Now, before you go too far, thinking you know who are the wheat and the weeds, two things.  First, it is God who makes those judgments in the parable.  But second, the wheat cannot survive without the weeds among it.  You might imagine the wheat tolerates the weeds, but I wonder if the weeds make the wheat better – challenge the wheat to be wise, discerning, and strong.  And perhaps the wheat encourages the weeds to do likewise.  I think my yogi’s description of intertwining roots applies.  We are stronger tied together than trying to remove ourselves or ignore the roots around us.  My prayer for us this week is that we start looking at the diversity of our intertwined roots and work toward engagement, discernment, and relationship – instead of hacking away at roots that might be our own.

Sermon – Luke 16.1-13, P20, YC, September 18, 2016

Tags

debt, dishonest, economics, friends, God, Jesus, kingdom friendships, loyalty, manager, master, money, parable, relationship, Sermon, shrewd, steward, tango, wealth

Often when we talk about Jesus, we marvel at his parables, and we encourage each other to follow his teachings.  We ask questions like, “What would Jesus do?” as if the answers are obvious.  We describe Jesus as illuminating God, helping us to understand God in an incarnate way.  We even say that all things necessary for salvation are found in Holy Scripture.  And for the most part, all of those things are true – until we get to today’s parable.  Most of us listen to the lesson for today and can only say, “Wait….what?”

Here’s the problem.  Unlike many of Jesus’ parables and sayings, most of us come away from this one completely confused.  Jesus starts off simply enough.  A rich man has a manger, or steward, and the manager is accused of squandering the master’s property.  The master threatens to fire the manager, and so the manager goes off and talks to all the debtors of his master.  Knowing he is about to be fired, the steward strikes deals with the debtors, decreasing their debts, in the hopes of making some friends who will feel indebted to him and may take him in once he is fired.  But what happens next is where the parable gets confusing.  When the master finds out what the steward has done, instead of being angry, he commends the manager for being shrewd.  And to top off this odd response, Jesus completes this whole parable with an instruction that all of us should be like the shrewd manager, making friends by means of dishonest wealth.  Jesus concludes the story by telling us that no one can serve God and wealth.

Confused yet?  You are in good company!  Even most scholars disagree about what the parable is trying to do.  Though we all might understand the part about our loyalties being torn between God and money, the parable hardly helps us get there.  The manager is a schemer – he is about to be fired because he has mismanaged things.  But instead of righting the situation with his master, he confesses that he is both lazy and proud.  He sneakily makes deals with the master’s debtors in the hopes that the debtors will see him as an ally and will help take care of him when he is fired.  But what is most confusing about the whole story is that Jesus says we should go and do likewise.

What might be helpful in getting our heads around Jesus’ strange parable is to understand the economics of “Roman-occupied Galilee in the first century.  Rich landlords and rulers were loan-sharks, using exorbitant interest rates to amass more land and to disinherit peasants of their family land, in direct violation of biblical covenantal law.  The rich man … along with his steward or debt collector, were both exploiting desperate peasants.”  Wealthy landlords of the day would hide interest charges in the money owed by the peasants.  According to scholars, someone like the wealthy steward could be charging the average peasant anywhere from 25-50% for the landlord, an additional cut for the himself, and then a Roman tax on top of all that.[i]

Now before we get too self-righteous about the injustice of the Roman economic system, we have to remember the economic system we operate under today.  Think about modern college students, who not only attend colleges with soaring tuitions, but also are being offered student loans with higher interest rates that ever before.  Add on top of that a weak economy and you see our young people being buried under unfair debt.  Or think about predatory payday loans.  Those scraping by to make ends meet start slipping behind.  Bills are due and they do not have enough to make ends meet, so they get lured in by the immediacy of a pay-day loan.  But by the time all is said and done, they lose more of their paychecks to the interest charged by loan sharks than if they had just kept their money.  And just in case we think we can get away with blaming student loan and payday lenders, we cannot forget our own country’s lending policies with impoverished countries.  Leaders of third world countries agree to harshly austere loans we make, but the poor of the country end up bearing the brunt of the burden.  In fact, “the Lutheran World Federation calls oppressive debt terms imposed on Honduras and other Latin American countries ‘illegitimate debt’ and likens such debt itself to ‘violence,’ because of its crushing effects on people’s futures.”[ii]  Though we may not have everyday contact with stewards or managers, their economic system is more familiar than we may realize.

What is unclear about the steward’s actions is how he is able to forgive some of the debtors’ debts.  In forgiving the debts of the debtors, the manager may have been forgiving his own cut of the interest being charged.  In that way, his actions seem a bit more noble.  Obviously, he is cutting out his own salary, but he is doing so in a way that seems to, at least outwardly, condemn the system.  Or, the steward could have been eliminating all the hidden and prohibited interest in the contracts.[iii]  This would have been a bolder move, as he would have been denying the master his typical amount due.  But because he is enforcing Jewish laws around interest, he would have ingratiated himself to the local Jewish peasants.   This is why the steward may receive commendations from the landlord and Jesus – not because he is noble per se, but because he manipulates the unjust system to curry favor with his neighbors – the very ones who might lend him a hand when he is fired for doing something supposedly just.[iv]  Whatever the self-interest of the steward is, what he is able to do, and perhaps why his master calls him shrewd, is use an unjust system against itself.  Just or not, the steward is able to see that the power of mutuality, of relationship, is the better bedfellow than the unjust economic system of the day.

One of my favorite classes in college was a class called “Social Dance.”  We spent the semester learning the Fox Trot, Waltz, Tango, Cha-Cha, and Swing.  My class happened to have more men than women, so I never had to sit out a dance.  I just switched from partner to partner, trying to adjust as each lead learned the steps.  There were many hard lessons in that class, not least of which was learning how to let the man lead.  But the hardest lesson was learning that no matter what dance we were doing, and no matter how intertwined our bodies were, my frame was a vital component to the dance.  Even in a dance like the Tango, where bodies seem to be intertwined, each partner is holding on to their frame, protecting their space.   I was fascinated to see how two bodies could function in such unison, looking like one unit, and yet, be two differentiated, separate units.

As I studied our gospel lesson this week, I wondered if Jesus’ lesson about wealth is not unlike a couple dancing the Tango.  Living in the world that we do, there is no way for us to escape the dancing partner of wealth.  Given that wealth has the power to corrupt, we will always need to keep our frame in place – keeping the dance going in unison, but never letting ourselves forget to be differentiated from dishonest wealth.  Though the steward seems unseemly and self-interested, he shows us an intricate tango with wealth – how to manipulate wealth so that wealth only hurts itself, not those most in need.

The way that we keep that firm frame is by being in relationship – by making friends as Jesus tells us.[v]  When we invest in friendships (not just friendships with people we like, but kingdom friendships[vi] – the kind of relationships that are unexpected, but feed us more than any wealth can), then wealth begins to lose its power to weaken our frame.  Kingdom friendships are those friendships with people at church or in the world with whom you thought you would never have anything in common.  Kingdom friendships are those relationships you develop with those who are different – either socioeconomically, racially, or ethnically.   Kingdom friendships are those relationships that develop when you realize that despite the fact that you are trying to help someone else, they are actually helping you.  The steward may have made kingdom friendships out self-interest, but the results are the same.  He realizes once he sees the humanity in those he is oppressing – once he makes kingdom friendships, the wealth he is pursuing no longer matters.  That is what Jesus invites us into today – that is how Jesus knows that we can hold onto our frame when dealing with the master of wealth.  Jesus invites us to nurture our kingdom friendships because when we nurture those friendships, we strengthen our sense of self, ensuring our frame never slips in our tango with wealth.  Amen.

[i] Barbara Rossing, “Commentary on Luke 16:1-13,” September 18, 2016, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2982 on September 14, 2016.

[ii] Rossing.

[iii] Rossing.

[iv] G. Penny Nixon, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 95.

[v] David Lose, “Pentecost 18C:  Wealth and Relationships,” September 14, 2016, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2016/09/pentecost-18-c-wealth-and-relationships/ on September 15, 2016.

[vi] Thomas Long, “Making Friends,” Journal for Preachers, vol. 30, no. 4, Pentecost 2007, 57.

Sermon – Luke 15.1-10, Jeremiah 4.11-12, 22-28, P19, YC, September 11, 2016

Tags

breath, celebrate, chaos, church, create, destroy, destruction, formless void, found, God, hope, Jesus, joy, lost, order, parable, September 11th, Sermon

I remember that day like it was months ago, not years ago.  I was driving into work, and caught the story right as I was about to exit the car.  A plane had crashed into one of the twin towers.  I rushed inside to find a radio, and my boss and I spent the day listening to the story unfold.  That night, I got the first glimpse of the destruction on television, and the visual was worse than listening to radio updates.  When the first tower fell, and then the second, the wind rushed out of me as I watched the wind rush out of those buildings.  Life lost inside, life being forced away from the wreckage, chaos and rubble left in the wake.  An eerie silence fell upon us as we watched in horror.

In Genesis 1, the narrator tells us that God forms the earth out of the formless void – tohu wa-vohu, in the Hebrew.  Out of nothingness and chaos, God forms order – separating the watery chaos from the earth, dividing the day from the night, bringing vegetation, beasts, and humans to life.  God takes chaos and creates order.  But on that day fifteen years ago, many of us felt like the opposite happened.  All of our order, routine, and compartmentalizing exploded into havoc.  Two-hundred and twenty stories of order were thrown into disorder – which does not even take into account the madness of destroyed winding hallways in the Pentagon and the decision of victims to crash into their own deaths rather than allow terrorists to use their plane for more destruction.  That day, we felt thrown back into a formless void, unsure of what end was up, and what had happened to our world.

I would like to say all is back to normal now – that after fifteen years, we or God managed to bring order back to the earth.  But all one has to do is look at the news and the state of our planet and governments around the world and feel like we are still in the formless void of post-9-11.  That is what makes the reading from Jeremiah so unsettling today.  As a foil to Genesis 1, Jeremiah 4 describes the earth as waste and void – the same word tohu wa-vohu found in Genesis.[i]  Jeremiah says that a hot, destructive wind[ii] blows and the earth becomes a mess – there is no light, the mountains quake, the people and birds of the air are gone, the fruitful land becomes a desert, and cities’ lay in ruin.  Jeremiah goes on to say something even more jarring – that the people are foolish and stupid.

Now, I imagine you may be sitting here today thinking, “This is supposed to be a celebratory day, and I managed to invite a friend to church.  Can you find us some joy, preacher?!?”  Don’t worry – we will get there.  I am happy to name where hope is today, but before we get to hope we have to go with Jeremiah into that desolate place.  You see, for those of us who know hope and joy, we know we do not arrive there on a straight path.  With the exception perhaps of children who have not begun to sense the depth of our depravity, most of us have been through the barren land Jeremiah sees coming.  Perhaps we only saw that formless void in the midst of a national tragedy, but perhaps we found that nothingness in the face of death, divorce, or debt.  Perhaps the destructive wind blew through our lives when violence, illness, or loneliness overwhelmed us.  We do not need to live in this world too long before we know exactly what that barren land looks and feels like.  There is probably even a scar left behind, or a metaphorical box we keep so that the watery chaos does not drown us.

But here is the weird part.  Only when we claim those times in our lives of tohu wa-vohu, those moments when the world is a formless void, can we experience the fullest heights of hope and joy.  Jeremiah calls the people nasty names today not because they are bad people or because they are not smart.  He calls them those nasty names because they have failed to remember gratefully and loyally who created them.  They have begun to live as if there is no hope, no grace.[iii]  And that is why we come to church.  To not let the formless voids of life overcome us, but to surround ourselves with a group of people who will remind us that there is still reason and room for hope.  We eagerly gather in church because we want to be reminded that our God graciously, lovingly, and mercifully blows a creative air into our nothingness and creates again and again.

That is why we celebrate on this day that could otherwise be a day of overwhelming sadness.  We celebrate today because Jesus tells us two parables that remind us why we are a people of hope.  These parables of being lost are why we gather with laughter and smiles today.  These parables are why we host a party later this afternoon – because we want to mirror the joy that God has over lost coins and sheep.

So how do we turn ourselves from the depths of sadness to the rejoicing of a heavenly party?  We need to do some work first.  Because the parable of the Prodigal Son follows these two short parables in Luke, we sometimes jump ahead and want to conclude, “All we need to do is repent, and the Lord will be happy.”[iv]  But today we only get these two short parables, and for that we are quite lucky.  Here’s the thing:  sheep and coins cannot repent.  They do not have the capacity to understand their own sinfulness.  They do not even have the capacity to act.  The funny thing about sheep who are lost is that they do not go around bleating for help.  They know that such noise might attract a predator.   Instead, they crouch behind a bush or other cover, and try to become invisible – paralyzed by the fear of being consumed in addition to being lost.[v]  Likewise, coins have no agency.  They cannot shout from under the couch cushion, “Over here by the crumbs!!”  Those being found cannot cause God to find them.  Nothing we do can earn us being found by God.  Being found, as always, is a gift from our loving God – who is the kind of God who will always seek us, ever search for us, even when searching for us may seem like a lost cause.  And on top of that, when those who are lost are found, the party that ensues is lavish, extravagant, and a taste of the heavenly banquet, as the heavens rejoice with God.

When I was growing up, money was often tight.  Though my parents rarely talked about our finances, I could tell the financial strain made them anxious.  As an adult, my father finally explained how they got by in scarce times.  A box of produce would show up on our doorstep on a day my dad was wondering what we eat that night.  A large bill would be sitting on the table and in our mailbox he would fine an envelope of cash – sometimes with a note that said, “thinking of you,” but sometimes without even a name.  Now, I am not saying that our family’s experience was the best financial planning model, but what our experience taught us is that sometimes you have no control over the good that happens in your life.  Sometimes you do not even have a person to thank.  Regardless, whatever blessing, whatever good comes our way, what Jesus invites us to do today is to be people who celebrate the God who, sometimes completely illogically, searches us out and finds us – and then throws a party when we are found.

When I realized we would be kicking off our program year on the same day as the fifteenth anniversary of September 11^th, I was overcome with dread, wondering if maybe I could just ignore the anniversary and turn our hearts toward celebration.  But our scripture today made me realize that celebration – true, deep, heart-rending celebration – can only happen when we understand the depths of our indebtedness toward our gracious God.  Once we understand that debt, then we can celebrate with grateful hearts.  I am thrilled to be embarking on a new program year with Hickory Neck and look forward to all that this year brings.  But that sense of excitement is especially deep because I know the depths of the formless void – the chaos from which we were created and back into which we sometimes slide.  Having seen the barren land that we sometimes create, I can only be even more filled with gratitude that our God is a God who scours every corner to find the coin She has lost.  Today is a day for sobriety – but that sobriety also leads us to a celebration of the heart:  a lavish party with the heavenly host.  I am grateful to be a part of a faith community that invites me to be a person of abiding hope.  Amen.

[i] Anathea Portier-Young, “Commentary on Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28,” September 11, 2016, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2973 on September 7, 2016.

[ii] George W. Ramsey, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 51.

[iii] Dwight M. Lundgren, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 53.

[iv] Karoline Lewis, “Lost and Found,” September 4, 2016, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post= 4708 on September 7, 2017.

[v] Helen Montgomery DeBevoise, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 70.

Sermon – Luke 15.1-3, 11b-32, L4, YC, March 6, 2016

Tags

bad, church, death, family, forgiveness, God, good, grace, honor, layers, Lent, love, parable, prodigal son, refreshment, repentance, respect, Rose Sunday, saints, Sermon

Growing up, my Grandfather was considered a saint.  He was kind and funny.  He was a wiz in the kitchen, and he always made you feel good.  He was beloved by all, and was known as a champion for the underdog.  That narrative was affirmed at his funeral as we told stories of his kindness and generosity.  He was without blemish and probably could have remained so had I not asked questions.  But over coffee one day, I had a conversation about the saintliness of my grandfather with my aunt and uncle.  Over the course of our conversation they slowly opened my eyes about how my grandfather was more nuanced that I realized.  What I interpreted as kindness they helped me see as, at times, avoiding conflict to the detriment of others.  What I saw as peacemaking could be interpreted as not standing up to bullies.  Slowly the one-dimensional man I knew developed layers – layers of goodness and weakness; layers of helpfulness and harm; layers of perfection and flaws.

We regularly do the same thing with those who have died – whether canonized saints or beloved family members.  In death, we honor all the goodness about them and gloss over the bad parts.  A classic example is one of my favorite modern-day saints, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  He spearheaded a movement with grace, insight, and boldness and inspired generations.  But I remember reading later in life how his treatment of women in the Civil Rights Movement was not always as admirable.  Slowly his layers emerged for me.  Although I still admire his work and writings, his life is more nuanced now.

Now some people will argue that we should not speak ill of the dead – that we should show our respect by letting go of the bad and only honoring the good.  In some respects, I understand why people do not want to dishonor the dead.  But I think telling stories that only make others seem perfect without honoring their flaws hurts us more than helps us.  That is why I love the parable of the two sons from our gospel today.  I resists calling the parable the parable of the prodigal son because I think both sons have something to teach us.[i]  In the parable, we can easily see the two brothers in one-dimensional ways.  The older brother is the good and faithful son for loyally supporting his father and the family business.  The younger brother is the bad son who insults his father, squanders his ill-gotten inheritance, and shamefully asks for more than he deserves.  Those one-dimensional stories are stories we know.  We have friends, family members, or maybe some of us even who are those characters – the responsible older sibling, or the troublemaking younger sibling; the child whom the parent always brags about, or the child about whom the parent seems embarrassed; the child who brings the family honor, or the child who brings the family shame.

But like any good parable, these characters are not as one-dimensional as they seem.  I was thinking about the younger brother this week and I realized we never hear about his impression of the party his father throws.  We suspect he is grateful for his father’s forgiveness, and we honor the humble way the younger son repents, but that party must have been hard.  Everyone at the party knows his sin.  Asking for his portion of his father’s inheritance before his father’s death was tantamount to wishing his father were dead.[ii]  In order for his father to give the younger son the money, he would have had to have sold off some land – a fate even worse for a culture who understood their land to be God’s promised gift.[iii]  Though his father’s forgiveness must have been a relief, I cannot imagine the rest of the town being so gracious.  I wonder whether the son stayed humble and repentant during the party; whether he was able to relax into his newfound forgiveness, laughing and joking; or whether he felt uncomfortable, bristling from his neighbors’ judgment and sideways glances.

Of course, we cannot forget the older brother.  The dutiful, obedient, hardworking brother loses all his perfection in his reaction to this party.  The older brother throws a temper tantrum of epic proportions.  He whines about the abundance his father shows his brother – perhaps rightfully so, since the money and fatted calf used for the party comes from what is left of the older son’s inheritance.[iv]  He complains about how he has never experienced such bounty and celebration.  He resents his father’s lack of gratitude for all the older son’s dutiful work.  Some of the son’s indignation is warranted.  He was, in fact, the good son, and his younger brother had behaved badly.  But the rewards of the story are not playing out so simply.  The older brother overreacts.  You see, his response is equally disgraceful to his father.  In the day of this parable, the host of a party was never to leave his guests.  Going to his older son would have been seen as disrespectful to the guests he had invited.[v]  But just like he goes out to meet his younger son, the father goes out to meet the older son, offering him similar generosity and abundance in the face of his son’s sin.

Part of why we love this parable so much is that we can identify with all the characters.  We are a people of nuanced layers too.  We have our younger son moments and our older son moments.  We have moments when we are bastions of forgiveness and grace, and moments when we withhold that forgiveness and grace.  Those among us who are known as having deep wells of patience have our moments when we snap.  And those among us who are known as being judgmental or stern have our moments of insightful kindness.

Our layers are why we have seasons like Lent and days for healing prayers.  In Lent, we shuffle home from our partying, wastefulness, and self-centeredness and return to our forgiving Lord.  In Lent, we bring our resentfulness, jealousy, and self-righteousness to the altar as we long for another way. In Lent, we bring our judgment of others and our judgment of ourselves and exchange them for freedom for humility and compassion.  Having a healing service in Lent allows us to do those things in a tangible way – not just to pray for physical healing of ourselves and others, but to pray for spiritual healing for those layers that are not as beautiful as others.

In order to honor that work of self-reflection and repentance, the church gives us what is called Rose Sunday, Refreshment Sunday, or even Mothering Sunday.  The idea is that being half-way through Lent, we take a day to break our fasting in these forty days.  In many parishes, to reflect the respite from penitence and fasting, the vestments and paraments change from their usual Lenten array to a beautiful rose-colored array.  On this day, we take a break from wallowing in ashes and our sack cloths, and we find refreshment in our Lord’s forgiveness and redemption.  In England, apprentice boys took this day off to visit their mothers, hence the one designation as Mothering Sunday.  We hear that invitation into gladness today in our psalm, “Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sin is put away!  Happy are they to whom the Lord imputes no guilt, and in whose spirit there is no guile!”[vi]  After weeks of repentance, heaviness, and weight, today the church invites us into forgiveness, lightness, and joy.

Rose Sunday is like the father in our parable today – full of forgiveness, grace, and love for us and all our layers – the good and the not-so-good – because we all have the layers.  Today the church runs out to greet us, leaves a good party, and meets us where we are – and loves us.  Today, the church says, “I see your layers, and I love all the parts of you, fully.”  Today the church is a fool for forgiveness, not wisely teaching us a lesson about humility, but senselessly lavishing upon us grace, love, and freedom from our self-centeredness and self-righteousness.  On this refreshment Sunday, the church invites us to remember that we are beloved children of God, a God who knows all our layers and loves us anyway.

I invite you today to take on the fullness of refreshment this day.  Whatever you have been working on this Lent, whatever guilt you have been harboring, or whatever sinfulness you have been examining, know that your sins are forgiven.  Know that you can come forward for healing prayers, not asking for healing and wholeness, but celebrating the healing and wholeness you have already experienced.  Know that you can come to the Eucharistic table not just for solace only but for strength; not just for pardon only, but for renewal.  As we say in our Rite I prayers, Jesus says to us, “Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.”[vii]  Amen.

[i] Karoline Lewis, “Perspective Matters,” February 28, 2016, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4553 as found on March 3, 2016.

[ii] N. T. Wright, Luke for Everyone (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2004),187.

[iii] Leslie J. Hoppe, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 119.

[iv] Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Parable of the Dysfunctional Family,” April 17, 2006, as found at http://www.barbarabrowntaylor.com/newsletter374062.htm on March 3, 2016.

[v] David Lose, “Lent 4 C:  The Prodigal God,” February 28, 2016, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2016/02/lent-4-c-the-prodigal-god/ on March 3, 2016.

[vi] Psalm 32.1-2.

[vii] Matthew 11.28.  BCP 332.

To whom does it belong?

Tags

God, greed, parable, stewardship, tenants, walking the way

As St. Margaret’s approaches our In-Gathering Sunday, a day when we gather our pledges for the coming year, some parishioners have been praying on what it means to Walk the Way in this Stewardship Season.  Below is a guest post from parishioner Barbara Archer.  I hope you enjoy her words.

As I sat in the pew Out East four weeks ago, listening to the Parable of the Tenants (Matthew 21:33), I found myself thinking, “What could I possibly have to do with this awful parable that Jesus told over 2,000 years ago?”  In addition, I thought, “I can’t wait to see how the priest is going to use this is parable in his sermon.  “The priest admitted that this was one of the “hard” parables but I was quite taken aback when he compared the tenants in the parable to me!

For a quick refresher of the Parable of the Tenants, there was an absentee vineyard owner who rented his vineyard to tenants.  When the owner sent his slaves to collect his portion of the grapes, the tenants killed the slaves.  The vineyard owner sends a second set of slaves to collect his portion of the grapes and the tenants do the same thing as before, killing the slaves.  Finally, the owner sends his son to the tenants thinking that they would respect his son and give the owner’s son his share of the grapes.  The tenants decide to kill the son so that they can have the son’s inheritance.  The parable goes on further but I will stop at this point.

I think most would agree that the tenants were the greedy scoundrels of this parable so how could I be compared to them?  The priest went on to explain that even though the vineyard owner had given the tenants all of his property, they were unwilling to share any portion of their profits.  The tenants greedily wanted to hang on to whatever they had made regardless of the fact that the vineyard owner had given them everything they needed to be  successful.  The priest went on to remind us that God gives us everything we need to be successful yet, often times, we turn our backs on God.  We refuse to give God, His share of our hard earned dollars despite the fact that He has given us everything!

Are you giving back to God his fair share?  Are you like the tenants?  It is a sobering question to ask yourself and to reflect on.  As we find our Stewardship Campaign coming to an end and our In-Gathering or Commitment Sunday nearly upon us (Nov. 2), please continue to pray and return your blue card with your 2015 Pledge Commitment this coming Sunday.  Our Stewardship theme this year is “Walking the Way.”  Which way are you walking?

Faithfully,
Barbara Archer

Sermon – Luke 13.1-9, L3, YC, March 3, 2013

Tags

fig tree, God, grace, Jesus, Lent, mercy, parable, repent, Sermon

We are half way through Lent, and this is the time that we begin to take stock.  But we do not always take stock of ourselves, humbly repenting of the ways we are stumbling with our disciplines.  No, we look at everyone else.  When we ask our fellow parishioners how their Lenten disciplines are going, we are not asking out of Christian love.  We are asking because we hope they are failing more miserably than we are.  We need to hear that someone has lapsed in their practice or given up altogether so that our weak attempts to hold on do not seem so weak after all.  We are a judgmental people, and we rarely offer the forgiveness that we so long to receive.

Jesus knows this as he listens to those gathered around him in our Gospel lesson today.  They are lamenting with Jesus about two groups of people who have recently suffered – the Galileans at the hand of Pilate and those near the tower of Siloam.  “Isn’t it horrible, Jesus,” they seem to be saying.  The insinuation is that those in Galilee and in Siloam must have sinned gravely to receive such suffering.  The assumption was a common one among the people of Israel.[i]  We remember the friends of Job who immediately assumed Job must have done something wrong to deserve his severe suffering.  Those gathered around Jesus are hoping that Jesus will confirm their suspicions – that Jesus will turn the spotlight on the sinfulness of those people, so that they can all shake their heads in judgment.

But Jesus will not take the bait.  Instead, Jesus tells this story:  Once upon a time, there was a fig tree that was not bearing fruit, and had not bore fruit for three years.  Fed up, the vineyard owner decided to cut down the unproductive tree.  But before the vineyard owner could touch the tree, the gardener made one last plea.  The gardener asked for one more year.  In that year, the gardener would dig around the tree, spreading manure at the roots of the tree.  If after a year of such care the tree still did not produce fruit, then the owner could chop down the tree.

The message seems to be clear in Jesus’ parable:  repent, change your ways, and start producing fruit, or you will be slaughtered.  But this interpretation of the parable gets all the parts confused.  The people gathered are not the gardeners begging God, the vineyard owner, for one more year to tend our garden.  That version of the parable would be too simple.  Instead, God is the gardener – the one negotiating grace – and they are the unproductive trees.

I have been thinking about life as the unproductive fig tree all week.  An unproductive tree is still very much alive – the tree goes about the business of breathing in and drinking up nutrients.  The tree is surviving, but not thriving.  But the tree is doing about all the tree can do.  The tree cannot fertilize itself.  The tree cannot aerate the tree’s own soil.  In order for the tree to thrive, the tree is dependent upon the gardener for the kind of care that produces fruit.

This is where I got stuck in the parable.  First, Jesus tells the people to repent; but then, Jesus tells the people that they are immobile trees, incapable of changing anything without the help of a gardener.  As someone who likes who likes to do, to be active, to achieve something, this parable is especially difficult.  If Jesus had just said to repent, I would have had a task to do – a job to accomplish.  Repenting, amending my ways, returning to God are all things I can work on and do.  But being a tree that just stands there, waiting for someone to help her, depending on God’s grace feels a lot less comfortable.

This Lent I really struggled with choosing a spiritual discipline.  I have tried all sorts of practices in Lent in the past:  reading a daily devotional, taking up a prayer practice, creating an exercise routine, or even giving up a foul mouth.  I tend to like the practices that add something to your life, rather than take something away.  But this year, nothing seemed to fit.  I talked to my spiritual director about my quandary, and she suggested something radical.  Instead of taking on something or giving up something, she suggested I just commit to just being more aware.  My busybody nature was totally confused and apprehensive.  But my spiritual director encouraged me to just try – to try spending this Lent, not busying myself with a discipline, but daily taking stock of my life patterns and observing.  This non-practice practice has been the most awkward experience for me.  As a person who needs tangibility, I have been left with this intangible practice.  No checklist to consult, no achievements to track:  just a practice of being, of letting God work on me.

I think what my spiritual director has been trying to get me to live into is the tree identity of our parable today.  In naming ourselves as the tree in Jesus’ parable, we are claiming a couple of things.  First, we are claiming that we are utterly incapable of determining our future.  The tree in the parable is not bearing fruit, and nothing the tree does will help the tree change this status.  The tree cannot try harder or behave differently.  The tree is simply a tree planted where the tree is.  Second, in identifying with the tree, we are claiming that we are dependent upon the gardener.  We are dependent upon the gardener’s mercy – the gardener who lobbies for one more year of trying.  We are dependent upon the gardener for determining the kind of nourishment we will receive.  We do not get to consult the gardener about the type of care we think we need.  We must trust the gardener to do what the gardener does best.

What I like about this parable today is that the parable takes us out of our comfort zones and puts us squarely in God’s hands.  First, by telling the people to repent, Jesus takes the people out of a mode of comparing and judging others and puts the people in the mode of tending to themselves.  His instruction to repent is almost Jesus’ way of saying, “Why don’t you stop worrying about what Pilate did and what the people of Siloam did, and why don’t you take stock of your own stuff.”  And then Jesus takes the wind out the sails of the people even further.  His parable tells them that not only do they need to not worry about what everyone else is doing, they need to realize that even the things that they are doing do not matter – because ultimately they are trees dependent upon God’s grace and mercy to thrive.

Now this may not sound like good news to us, but this is a tremendous word of grace for us today.  In the midst of the season of Lent, that season that we are typically kneading the dough of our lives, trying to get ourselves just right for God, Jesus leaves us with a word of grace.  Jesus’ parable today shifts our energy this week.  Instead of desperately grasping to change and amend our lives, Jesus invites us to let go:  to let go of trying so hard, and to remember the God who lovingly offers to do the work of digging in our soil and spreading smelly manure so that we might bear delicious fruit.

As we have been thinking about gardening this Lent, I have been hearing many stories of your own gardens.  For those of you who garden, you have lived this invitation that Jesus offers.  You have lived through a season where the tomatoes did not make it, where the new crop was not planted in the right place, and where critters have come in and destroyed.  And for those of you who are seasoned at this work, the common phrase I hear from you is, “Ah well, we’ll try again next year.”  This is the kind of letting go that Jesus is inviting us into this week.  This is the kind of trust in God that Jesus encourages.  As we come forward for healing prayers today, an old gospel hymn keeps running through head when I think of Jesus’ parable today.  The chorus says, “Your grace and mercy brought me through.  I’m living this moment because of You.  I want to thank you and praise you too.  Your grace and mercy brought me through.”  In the midst of our Lenten journey, we pause today to recognize the ways in which we are simply trees in God’s garden, dependent upon God’s grace and mercy to get us through.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

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[i] Daniel G. Deffenbaugh, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 92.