Unsinkable

Scriptures:       Genesis 37:1-28;  Psalm 69,  Romans  10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

 

 

 

Today’s Gospel reading gives us the story of Jesus walking on the water.  Of course, due to the miraculous nature of the story, there are attempts to explain it by natural phenomena.   For example, there’s the story that when a Sunday school class heard this story, one of the kids whispered, “I think Jesus must have known were the rocks were.”

 

Our Gospel reading today picks up where last week’s about the feeding of the 5000 left off.  Remember that, having been rejected by his hometown and having just learned of the execution of John the Baptist, who had been Jesus’ mentor, Jesus needed some downtime, some alone time.   He had tried to go to a deserted place to pray, but the crowds found him, and Jesus instead ended up holding first a healing clinic and then a banquet.  We can imagine that by the end of all this Jesus, who had been running on low batteries to begin with, was utterly drained, energy reserves near zero.  And so it’s understandable that Jesus got his disciples out of the way by commanding them to get in the boat, dismissed the crowds, and went off by himself, finally at long last, to pray.  He needed to talk to God, needed to recharge and refocus.

 

By the time Jesus was done, the boat with the disciples was far from shore, and it was the wee hours of the morning.  At this point Jesus began walking on the water toward the boat – and the disciples were freaked out, thinking they’d seen a ghost.  But Jesus reassures them with the words, “Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.  Peter still has doubts, and so he answers Jesus, “Lord, if it’s you, command me to come to you on the water.”  I want to do what you’re doing.  And amazingly enough, Jesus indulges Peter, saying “Come”.  And then Peter began to walk on the water.  But when Peter takes his eyes off Jesus and sees the wind and waves, he begins to sink, and cries to Jesus for help.  And Jesus said to Peter, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” And when they were back in the boat, the storm ceased.

 

We may think this is a nice miracle story, a nice story to tell the kids in Sunday school, but wonder what it has to do with us.  But really, this story is all about us, because the story is all about the church.  In times past, the church was often pictured as a boat on the sea, and in fact in church architecture, the main part of the church, where we are now, is called the nave…..this word comes from the word for sea, and in the ceilings above us – especially for churches with a curved ceiling, the ceiling reminded people of the bottom of a boat.  . 

 

The thing about a boat is that it’s not supposed to stay on shore or tied to the dock all the time.  A boat isn’t meant to stay on dry land, but to go out on the water.  If you don’t want to go out on the water, you don’t need a boat.  In the same way, the church isn’t meant to stay in drydock, but to carry us out into the sea of life….where there will be wind and waves, times of calm, and times of storm. 

 

The boat that the disciples were on was a small boat, and vulnerable.  It’s not like they were sailing on a battleship with guns blazing, or an aircraft carrier.  Rather, it was a small fishing boat.  And that’s a picture of the church, a sometimes-fragile place, out in search of disciples.  Particularly here at Emanuel, we feel the fragility – small numbers, smaller resources.  Sometimes it feels like one big storm or one big wave – such as an unexpected large repair bill – would sink this place.  And yet, by the grace of God, the Good Ship Emanuel is very much afloat – afloat and moving forward. And not just we as a church, but we as individuals.

 

And  yet each of us go through life with the wind and waves swirling around us.  How can we keep from going under.   We would do well to listen to Jesus’ words to his disciples:  Take heart.

It is I.  Do not be  afraid. 

 

Take heart – Other translations are “Cheer up!”  “Have courage”  “Keep your composure”…..in other words, “stop freaking out!”.   We may remember other times when similar words were used – when the Israelites were at the end of the Red Sea, seemingly at a dead end, and Moses said, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see God’s mighty deliverance.”  Or at the Last Supper, when Jesus said, “In the world you’ll have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”  I think those on Facebook have seen various versions of the picture that says “Keep calm and carry on”.  That’s what Jesus asked of his disciples, and what he asks of us.

 

It is I  -  At first, the disciples didn’t recognize Jesus as he was walking toward them – understandable, as it was the wee hours of the morning and he was at a distance.  Do we have the spiritual vision to recognize Jesus’ presence among us?  More than that, the original Greek words used by Matthew, “Ego eimi”, recall the divine name, “I am”.  When life has us freaking out, we can find new courage in remembering that God is, and that God cares.

 

Do not be afraid -  This is the message we hear consistently throughout the Gospels – when the angel came to Mary to announce that she would be giving birth, and when the angel came to Joseph to tell him to take Mary as his wife, the angel said, “Don’t be afraid.”  And on Easter morning, when the women came to the tomb and saw the stone rolled away, the angel’s first words were “Do not be afraid.” 

 

Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid – These were Jesus’ words to the disciples, and are Jesus’ words to us.  Do not be afraid – despite all the turmoil our world and our country are going through.  Do not be afraid – despite how fragile our own lives seem.  Do not be afraid.  Do not be afraid.  Keep calm and carry on.

 

In our Old Testament reading, Joseph likewise had to take courage, to trust in God and not be afraid.  His own brothers were considering killing Joseph and ended up selling him as a slave – and while Joseph as a youth comes across as a fairly annoying person, he certainly didn’t deserve what his brothers gave him.  But even when he was down in a pit, even when he was in the land of Egypt serving the Pharoah, even when he was imprisoned on false charges, God was with him – and this faith sustained Joseph, to the point where everyone around Joseph could see that God was with him.

 

Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid – words for us who are sailing on the Good Ship Emanuel through stormy days.  Let us not be intimidated by the wind and waves, but rather “keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was waiting endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2).  Amen.

 

 

The Things That Make For Peace (August Newsletter article)

Dear Emanuel Members and Friends –

 

“So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” (Genesis 32:30)

“Jacob said, ‘No, please; if I find favor with you, then accept my present from my hand, for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God - since you have received me with such favor.’” (Genesis 33:10)

“Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” (Psalm 34:14)

“As [Jesus] came near and saw the city [of Jerusalem], he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.’…Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there.” (Luke 19:41-42, 45)

 

Peace is in scarce supply these days.  Our news tells heartbreaking stories of conflict around the world, particularly in Israel and Palestine, which has claimed upwards of 1500 lives in Palestine (most of them civilians) and 60 lives in Israel, as well as in Iraq, where an extreme fundamentalist Islamic group called ISIS is persecuting more moderate Muslim citizens, and has driven Mosul’s ancient Christian community to flee the city, ending (at least for now) 1800 years of Christian presence in Mosul. (The area known as Mosul is referenced in the Bible under its ancient name, Nineveh.)  Here at home, extreme political hyper-partisanship has rendered the US Congress virtually non-functional, to the point where passing even the most routine legislation is a huge struggle. Our country suffers extremes of wealth and poverty not seen since the Gilded Age of the late 1800’s.  Our Bridesburg neighborhood struggles with petty theft and vandalism, to the point where there is consideration of hiring private police to supplement the efforts of the 15^th District officers.  And many families in Bridesburg, as in any other neighborhood, struggle with addiction and violence within the home.  And how about our own peace of mind?  Conflicts without and within.

 

Jesus wept over Jerusalem, saying “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!” If Jesus were looking down on Jerusalem today – or Washington DC or Philadelphia, PA for that matter, I’m sure Jesus would say the same thing. What are the things that make for peace?  Will more weapons bring peace?  More money, more gadgets and toys, more “stuff”? (Jesus’ driving the moneychangers out of the Temple would appear to indicate otherwise.)  Will forcing others, perhaps by violent threats, to accept our point of view bring peace?

 

And what is peace?  The pax Romana, or Roman peace, of Jesus’ day was enforced by brutal violence. Violating the pax Romana got Jesus crucified. Cemeteries are generally peaceful, but we can’t live in cemeteries. Is peace the mere absence of conflict?  Or is it something more positive, a spirit of cooperation and willingness to care for neighbor as well as self?

 

On the run from his brother Esau, whom he had cheated out of his birthright and paternal blessing, Jacob grappled by night with a stranger, understood to be a divine apparition.  Perhaps we can see this is as a picture of Jacob wrestling with his conscience over a lifetime of “getting over” on others.  At the end of it, he declared that he had seen God face to face.  And later, on reconciling (briefly) with his brother, he said that meeting Esau on favorable terms was like seeing the face of God.  Twice in one passage, that phrase is used, first to describe a divine encounter, and then to describe an encounter with another human being – and that repetition is meant to draw our attention to what is happening within Jacob and between Jacob and his long-estranged brother Esau.

 

The peace promised by Jesus to his disciples at the Last Supper (John 14:27) is an inside job.  It can’t be imposed with force from outside by others.  It begins within us, as we recognize our connection to the Divine and to the presence of the divine, the “face of God”, within us.  It moves out from us to others, as we recognize the “face of God” in our neighbor.  How would we treat our neighbors if we remembered that they, like we, are created in God’s image and have “that of God” within them?

 

May the peace of Christ that passes all understanding provide us with solid footing on which to stand, and a calm center within us from which we can move to cope with the challenges of our day.

 

See you in church! - Pastor Dave

Enough

Scriptures:  Genesis 32:6-12, 22-31; 33:1-11; Romans 9:1-5,  Matthew 14:13-21

It’s no secret to anyone that, as a nation, America has a weight problem.  There has been a dramatic increase in both childhood and adult obesity since 1990 – the definition of “obese” being 20% over one’s ideal weight.  According to the Centers of Disease Control, slightly over 1/3 of American adults are obese and roughly 1/6 of children and teens are obese.[1]  Now, this is not a problem for Pastor Dave.  Believe it or not, I’m at my ideal weight.  The problem is my height…..250 pounds would be my ideal weight, if my height were 7 feet 5 inches. [2]  It’s true – you can look it up online.  Unfortunately, it seems that I stopped growing prematurely – I’m a bit under 6 feet, so I’m a foot and a half short - so I have a height problem.

 

Of course, I jest.  Like many of us, I weigh too much, considerably too much, even dangerously too much.   My ideal weight is around 175 pounds, and I weigh 250 pounds – you can do the math.  I often tell people that when I consider Psalm 51, verse 3:  “My sin is ever before me” – in my case this is literally true – my sin is right there, hanging off my waistline, blocking my view of my shoes. 

 

Many people may blame America’s obesity problem on individual factors – gluttony, lack of discipline, and so forth.   Many pundits, particularly on the conservative end of the political spectrum, dismiss worries about increasing poverty by stating that only in America are poor people overweight – ignoring the fact that in stretching limited funds, lower income families are more or less forced to load up on cheap, processed, high fat, high salt, high calorie food; healthier options such as fruits and vegetables are more expensive, unless you can grow them yourself.  And in general, at any economic level, our culture strongly encourages overeating.  Food portions have increased significantly over the past 25 years.[3]  And when most of us were growing up, our mothers made us clean our plates…..mom always said it had something to do with starving children in India.  McDonald’s encourages us to “super-size it”.   If we like soda, the sugary stuff is of course loaded with calories, and increasingly it’s believed that even diet soda, while not loaded with sugar, still has the potential to mess up our metabolism and cause weight gain.  Now, of course, some very expensive restaurants are notorious for charging an arm and a leg and then bringing out a plate with a few tiny dabs of food on it.  But in today’s economy, few of us can afford to throw our money away on places like that.  So instead, we go to the Chinese buffet and go back for seconds, thirds, and maybe fourths…..   And when we get home we say, in the words of the old Alka Seltzer commercial, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.”    When is enough, enough.

 

Today’s Scripture readings give us several pictures of what “enough” looks like.  Our Gospel reading from Matthew tells about Jesus feeding the multitudes.  And our reading from Genesis gives us a picture of a moment of reconciliation – tentative, incomplete, fleeting, but still reconciliation – between Jacob and his long-estranged brother Esau, in which there was plenty to go around.

 

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus has been having a run of discouraging news.  Jesus had gone to his home town to preach, and all but got laughed out of town.  Matthew’s gospel tells us that Jesus was amazed at their unbelief.  And then there was another banquet, to which Jesus was not invited – thank goodness.  Matthew tells us that Herod had thrown a birthday party – a banquet to which he invited all of his officials.  At this time John the Baptist had been imprisoned for condemning Herod’s desertion of his wife to marry his brother’s wife.  The daughter of Herod’s new wife danced before the guests, and Herod promised the daughter anything she wanted – to which the daughter replied, ‘I want the head of John the Baptist on a platter’.  And what daddy’s girl asked for, daddy’s girl got.  Remember that John the Baptist had baptized Jesus and perhaps had been a mentor to him. 

 

So after his rejection in his hometown and the murder of his mentor, Jesus needed some down time and went away to a deserted place.  Unfortunately, the crowds didn’t get the memo, and so they followed him.  Matthew tells us that when Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them – probably heaved a deep sigh and waded into the crowd, curing their sick.  Evening came, and the disciples thought it was time to send folks home for supper.  Jesus, recognizing a teaching moment, told them, “they don’t have to go home; you feed them”.  The disciples said, “with what?  All we have are five loaves and two fish” – and John’s gospel tells us that it was a little boy that had volunteered that.  Matthew tells us that Jesus had everyone sit down, and then took the loaves and fish - the boy’s lunch - blessed it, broke the loaves, and fed the 5000, and there were twelve baskets left over.

 

While we didn’t read both stories today, Matthew’s Gospel sets side by side two banquet stories; that of Herod’s birthday party with his invited guests, to which only Herod’s friends were invited and which ended in the murder of John the Baptist, and Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000, to which all were invited and from a boy’s lunch all were fed, and there was food to spare.

 

What are we to make of Jesus’ feeding of the 5000.  There was an explanation, popular some years ago, that the boy’s generosity in offering his lunch shamed everyone else into sharing the food they had brought.  But I’m wary of trying to explain away what’s presented as a miracle .  

 

I do think the back-to-back stories of Herod’s banquet and Jesus’ banquet invite us to re-examine our notions of hospitality.   In the church, and in our lives, who’s invited, who’s excluded.  Clearly Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 is giving us a vision of the heavenly banquet, which is open to many, not only a few.  His story also invites us to look at our notions of when is enough, enough.  We tend to think in terms of scarcity – it seems like there’s never enough money, never enough food, never enough time, never enough volunteers….never enough.  And here at Emanuel, I can certainly get sucked into that kind of thinking.   It’s easy to look around at our church, look at the small attendance and smaller offerings, the long list of building repairs that need done, the small number of folks to get everything done – and throw up our hands.  But Matthew’s Gospel reminds us that what we have and what we are can be enough – if we’re willing to offer it to God.  I’m quite sure the little boy who volunteered his lunch didn’t think he’d be feeding 5000 people that day.  But in his naïve, generous faith, he wanted to do what he could….and a miracle took place.  It’s a generous faith to which I’d invite us.  We may hold back in offering our resources – time, talent, treasure – to the church, thinking it’s too little to make a difference.   What difference can the little I can give make?  But Matthew’s gospel tells us that it’s enough, that we’re enough – enough to do miracles, if – if – IF - we’re willing to put our resources and our lives into God’s hands. 

 

The stories we’ve read about Jacob also speak about feelings of scarcity and abundance.  Today we have a reunion of Jacob with his estranged brother Esau.  Remember how they became estranged – Jacob, the “grabber” who was literally born grabbing at Esau’s heel, also grabbed Esau’s birthright and blessing.   Jacob had this overwhelming sense that he never had enough, he needed more…..so he grabbed what belonged to his brother.  Jacob was anything but a role model, and just didn’t play well in the sandbox with others.  But, through his long stay with his uncle Laban – who was basically an older version of Jacob, just as big a cheat as Jacob – and various encounters with God along the way, Esau’s heart was changed.  In our reading today, Jacob even grabbed at what we understand to be a divine apparition, not letting go until he got a blessing.  Jacob was wrestled to a draw.  After that, Jacob hears that his brother Esau is on the way, and gets scared – and in that moment becomes generous, offering many gifts to his brother.  (He also sends his women and children to Esau ahead of him – again, not especially admirable given that he thought Esau might have wanted to kill him.  Even at his best, Jacob was a mixed bag.)    It was Jacob’s greed that led to the break with Esau, and Jacob’s generosity – however self-serving – that led to at least a brief reconciliation.

 

How about us? In our lives and in world affairs, isn’t it often people’s desire for more than they need that causes struggle?  To quote James chapter 4: “These conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it, so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it, so you engage in disputes and conflicts….”  We see this among individuals, and we see it among countries, in the many conflicts around the world.  It is in knowing when enough is enough – and in offering that “enough” back to God and to our neighbors, that reconciliation happens.  May Emanuel Church continue to be a place of generous giving and faithful living.  Amen.

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[1] http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/facts.html

[2] http://www.healthstatus.com/perl/calculator.cgi

[3] http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/nutrition/pdf/portion_size_research.pdf

More Than Conquerors

(Scriptures:  Genesis 29:15-30;  Romans  8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52)

As I was preparing this sermon, an old Eric Clapton song popped up in my head – I can't remember all the words, but it's the one with the chorus that goes.....

 

 

 

 

 

Baby if I could change the world
Baby if I could change the world[1]

 

If I could change the world…..If I could….

 

Today’s Gospel reading gives us a number of “mini-parables” – sermon illustrations or teaching points for which Jesus didn’t provide interpretations.  Indeed, unlike the parables we read last week and the week before, these parables are only a sentence or two each.  Jesus is trying to describe something too wonderful to put into words – the reign of God – and so, like an artist furiously throwing strokes of paint on canvass in an attempt to describe the indescribable, Jesus is tossing out mental images, one after the other, to give his listeners a glimpse of God’s glory.

 

Oddly enough, though, the first mental images Jesus tosses out aren’t all that glorious.  Jesus first compares the reign of God to the little mustard seed.  We think of this parable telling us that great things can come from humble beginnings – mighty oaks from little acorns grow.  Certainly, in a little church like ours – our itty-bitty congregation itself hardly bigger than an acorn compared to others – this is a comforting image. 

 

And it’s a true image.  But this leaves out an inconvenient fact – the mustard bush is a weed!   Nobody in their right mind would plant mustard in their garden along with anything else; the mustard bush would take over…..and indeed, it would get big enough to attract birds – which you likewise wouldn’t want in your garden.  (Indeed, when I lived in South Philly, the lady next door put plastic snakes on the fence near her tomato bushes to scare off the birds – but that’s a story for another time…..)    In comparing God’s reign to an invasive weed, Jesus is not only saying that big things can come from small beginning – he’s saying something more like, “you give God an inch and God’ll take a mile.”    More traditional Old Testament images of national glory – such as near the end of Ezekiel 17 - compare the king to a mighty cedar tree planted atop a mountain, under whose branches all birds and animals find shelter.   But in Jesus’ parable, the kingdom of God is compared to a weed overrunning a garden.  No one can say Jesus didn’t have a sense of humor. 

 

Jesus’ comparison of God’s reign to that of a woman mixing yeast in dough also has an element of subversion.  We, who live on Wonder Bread, are used to bread that has risen, bread with yeast.  But in some parts of Old Testament tradition, yeast is associated with corruption – and so, before Passover, all yeast is to be removed from the house – indeed, the house is to be scrubbed carefully to remove every last speck of yeast, and only unleavened bread eaten.  Paul picks up this theme in I Corinthians 5 when, in admonishing the church there to disfellowship one who had committed grave sin, tells us readers, “get rid of the old yeast” – that is to say, the yeast of corruption and sin – “so that you may be a new unleavened batch, as you really are.”  And of course, once yeast or leaven gets into a batch of flour, the yeast will do its thing and there’s no way to reverse the process. And yet, Jesus is comparing God’s reign to yeast.   In comparing God’s reign to an invasive weed and to yeast, he seems to be saying that God’s reign is something that, once it breaks in, is subversive, taking over and undermines the established system – the powers that be, the powers of Empire – what Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, called “this filthy, rotten system”, and what St Paul called powers and principalities, and spiritual wickedness in high places – and turns it into a place where God can reign.

 

The Revised Common Lectionary – the assigned Scripture readings for Roman Catholics and many mainline Protestant denominations, which we also follow – sets Jesus’ parables of the mustard seed and of the yeast side-by-side with today’s section of Paul’s letter to the church of Rome, in which Paul encourages that church to keep on keeping on through persecution, promising them that, in Christ, they will be “more than conquerors”.   “More than conquerors” – big words for a small group of disciples that were being persecuted – believers that, in Paul’s words, were being killed all day long, sheep for the slaughter.  How was this little cluster of believers in Rome – and little clusters of believers like it in Jerusalem, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, and so forth – going to be more than conquerors?  I think Jesus’ parables about seeds and about the mustard bush and about yeast give us a roadmap.  For Jesus and for Paul, being more than conquerors was not a call to act like invading armies, but rather like invasive weeds.  You know how weeds are – pull them all you want, spray them all you want; they always come back.  And that’s  how we are to be as people of faith, as followers of Jesus – being tenacious in holding to our faith, being tenacious in acting out our faith with words of kindness and deeds of love, words and deeds that plant seeds of faith that will blossom in the lives of others – being tenacious in saying yes to God and no to the greed and violence that would destroy our world. 

 

Back to that Eric Clapton song with which I began this sermon, with its haunting refrain of “If I could change the world…..”  If I could change the world.  If…..   A colleague of mine, the Rev.  Dwayne Royster, a former classmate at and fellow graduate of Lutheran Theological Seminary, founded Living Water Community Church, which a few years ago joined the United Church of Christ, and is now known as Living Water United Church of Christ.  They started out with a group about as large as our church – 15-20 people – but have grown to the point that they’ve outgrown several buildings, including a dance studio and a former liquor store where they had once met, and just recently bought the building of a Lutheran church in the Northeast that had fallen on hard times.  They do tremendous amounts of ministry around the city – AIDS ministry, feeding programs, advocacy for public schools and for getting guns off the streets.  Understandably, Rev. Royster gets lots of calls to speak before church groups; he spoke at several of my seminary classes.  And Dwayne always begins his talk to seminarians with a question – phrased in a way that sounds out of place in a church setting – “What are you going to do to change this damned world?”  Of longtime pastors and established churches, Dwayne asks, “What are you doing to change this damned world?”  Of course, there’s always a gasp of breath – Pastor Dwayne said a swear word.  And in quoting Dwayne, now Pastor Dave said a swear word.  I’ll wash out my mouth with soap when I get home.  But Dwayne’s question reminds us that the world system – our world’s system of greed and violence and materialism and militarism and racism and sexism and all the –isms – is condemned by God to destruction, is, in a word, damned – for that’s the original meaning of the word, condemned by God.  And as Christians, more generally as people of faith, our task, our job, our calling is to change it, to claim it for God.  Not by going off on self-righteous crusades – as I said last week, crusades past and present always end in killing the innocent and cause more suffering than they relieve – and our own sinfulness is always the first thing we need to hand over to God for God to deal with before we set out to change anything else.  Rather we change the world first by allowing God to change us, and then, like weeds and like yeast, we change what’s around us, showing kindness where the world shows contempt, feeding the poor and clothing the naked, caring for those that those in power would rather ignore – sort of like the stories of Bethany Children’s Home caring for those refugee children from Central America.   Of those children, the powerful say, “Send ‘em back home” – back home to be brutalized, raped, killed.  Bethany, by contrast, is caring for them until they can be reunited with their families here in the United States.  Changing the world means standing with those who are unpopular and unwelcome, and risking becoming unwelcome ourselves – as our food cupboard here in Bridesburg has done in feeding our neighborhood’s hungry.  All of this is the work of the kingdom, acting as yeast in turning systems of domination upside-down, acting as salt and light in a world that needs both.

 

All of us here are fighting difficult battles – with our own weakness and brokenness, and with the brokenness and sin around us.  Worse than fighting difficult battles is feeling like we’re fighting them alone.  We may wonder where God is as we struggle.  Has God forgotten us? Has God left the building?  St Paul assures us:  “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? …No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  May we, who have been conquered by Christ’s love, live as “more than conquerors” as we go forth from this place to live and to love and to serve here in Bridesburg, where God has planted us.  Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_the_World

 

 

 

 

Another Seedy Story

(Scriptures:  Genesis 28:10-19a;  Romans  8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43)

In this week’s Gospel reading, Jesus once again tells a parable about seeds.  Last week’s parable was about seed that landed in four different type soils – a beaten-down path, rocky ground, weedy ground, and prepared soil.  This week’s parable is about one piece of soil and two types of seed – wanted and unwanted, wheat and weeds. 

We’re told that a landowner planted good seed, but that along with the good seed came up weeds. This wasn’t discovered until the wheat started forming heads.  The servants asked the landowner where the weeds came from, and the landowner said, “An enemy has done this.”  The landowner’s servants asked if the landowner wanted them to pull up the weeds.  The landowner’s response is perhaps unexpected:  no, in uprooting the weeds, you’ll hurt the wheat.  Let them both grow together until the harvest, and then at the harvest you can yank the weeds first, and then harvest the wheat.

This parable is not primarily about wheat – this is not an episode of “You Bet Your Garden” from NPR - but about people.  Again, as in last week’s parable, along with the parable Jesus provides an interpretation….the good seed represents the good people, and the bad seed represents the bad people.  Rather than having the bad people struck down, God allows them both to live, side by side, until the last day, when they will be separated. 

This parable and interpretation seem fairly cut and dried….but Jesus’ parables always mean more than may appear on the surface.  For one thing, why did it take as long as it did for the servants to notice the weeds, and why didn’t the landowner want them pulled right away?  One reason might be that the wheat and weeds looked similar.  In fact, it’s thought that the weeds sown by the enemy were darnel, also called ryegrass, a kind of grass in Europe and Asia that looks a lot like wheat until it’s fully mature.  The problem is that the heads of darnel grain are poisonous, so you don’t want it mixed in with the harvested wheat…..and in fact, apparently situations like the parable happened often enough that Rome actually had a law against sowing darnel in the field of an enemy.  So, anyway, had the weeds been something that looked nothing like wheat, such as dandelions or poison ivy, perhaps the landowner would have wanted them pulled right away.  As it was, there was no reliable way the laborers could have separated wheat from darnel until both were fully mature.   It’s a galling situation – after all, the weeds are taking up ground and soaking up nutrients that were intended for the wheat.  But for the landowner, it was more important to preserve the wheat than it was to get rid of the weeds.

We know that, in our lives and even in the church – and I’m talking about the worldwide church, “Big C” church – there are people who are good and those who are not so good.  Our human impulse is to want to get rid of the bad people. The problem is, since we can’t know everything about other people and can’t see into the future, in this life there’s no way to sort out the good people from bad people.  People with bad intentions can camouflage themselves well enough to pass as good, and sometimes people’s good intentions aren’t easy to tease out.  Further, like St Paul, who went from persecuting the gospel to spreading the gospel or St Francis who started out life wealthy and carefree, and went on to live a life of poverty, a life dedicated wholly to God and others, by the grace of God, peoples’ lives can change, so that we can’t predict how peoples’ lives will end up based on where they begin.  We see this clearly in our Old Testament readings from last week and this week, in which Jacob is anything but a model of integrity….and yet is blessed by visitations from God at various points in his life, as in this week’s reading, while, when on the run from his brother Esau, he receives a divine vision, and afterward says, “This is none other than the gate of heaven and the house of God.”

 Still further, sometimes people with good intentions can do incredible evil.  This happened during the Crusades, when Christians slaughtered non-Christians, and during the Inquisition and other times when Catholics and Protestants tortured and killed one another, all in the name of a loving Christ.  A more recent example is prohibition, when well-intentioned attempts to outlaw alcohol consumption instead succeeded only in driving it underground, taking it out of the hands of law-abiding citizens and putting it into the hands of the Mafia.    Or, in Germany in the 1940’s, when Hitler’s attempt to create the perfect Aryan society led to his killing some six million Jews, along with gypsies, homosexuals, and others deemed by him to be undesirables.  Or, much more recently, with our country’s “War on Terror” mostly succeeding, not in killing all the terrorists, but in driving formerly harmless people to despair and, finally, to terrorism – that is to say, our “war on terror” has created terrorists faster than it’s destroyed terrorists.  Our human impulse is to want to kill or banish all the “bad” people, but such attempts always, pretty much without exception, are more effective in harming the innocent than in punishing the guilty.  Inevitably, such attempts become driven by self-righteousness, as we can usually see the speck in other peoples’ eye more clearly than we can see the beam in our own.  Inevitably, we forget that in fact the garden is God’s garden, not our own, and it’s not for us to say what does or does not grow there. That decision is above our pay grade – it’s in God’s hands.

So if we’re not called to purge the unrighteous from our midst, what are we called to do?  Basically, we’re called to endure, to concentrate on bringing forth good fruit rather than focusing on the bad fruit of others.  Instead of trying to pull out those in our midst that we see as weeds, we’re called merely to outlast them.  This parable also gives us confidence that, indeed, we can outlast the weeds; that the weeds can threaten us but in the end by God’s grace will not destroy us.

One of the challenges of the parable is that it seems to portray humans as being all bad or all good, weeds or wheat.  But that seems a bit simplistic. From our own experience, our lives are like fields that contain both wheat and weeds – and often the roots of the weeds are tangled up in the roots of the wheat.  By God’s grace, we have faith that, over time, the wheat will prosper and the weeds will diminish – but that process won’t be finished this side of heaven.  We are each of us a mixed bag – as Martin Luther put it, simultaneously justified and sinner – and our churches are likewise mixed companies of saints and sinners.  As Christian and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “the line between good and evil passes not between states, nor between classes, nor between political parties, but right through every human heart.  In all of our hearts, there are seeds of evil and seeds of good. Which seeds will we water? 

And which seeds will we plant?  Will we ally ourselves with the landowner, planting good seed, or with the landowner’s enemy, sowing seeds of trouble.  Through our actions, good and evil, we plant seeds of good and evil, not only in our own lives, but in the lives of others and in society.  Which is to say, our actions have consequences.  Certainly, God can intervene to deliver us from the worst consequences of our sins – but nonetheless, consequences remain.  Our words can be life-giving or death-dealing.  Our lives are connected, so that the consequences of our actions can reverberate indefinitely in our own lives and in the lives of others.   We may never have a chance to see the full outcome of our simple, random acts of kindness – or of our random acts of unkindness.  What seeds will we plant?  What seeds will we water?  What seeds will we harvest?

These questions apply, not only on a personal level, but on a societal level.  We’ve heard of thousands of children from Latin American, many from El Salvador, Guatamala and especially from Honduras, traveling alone, facing all manner of obstacles, to get to the US border.  These children are fleeing horrific poverty and violence in their home countries – and our nation’s Latin American policies in decades past have unfortunately had a role in creating these situations.  For example, the School of the Americas, located in Ft. Benning, Georgia, created during the Cold War to combat the spread of communism, since the 1960’s has trained Latin American military leaders implicated in numerous political killings, such as the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero,  and human rights abuses over a period of decades – at the School of the Americas, torture techniques were on the syllabus as part of the curriculum – and some of these military leaders, such as former Panamanian president Manuel Noriega and the current Guatamalan president Otto Perez Molina, went on to become dictators of their respective countries.  More recently, US policies in connection with the so-called War on Drugs have empowered thugs and murderers who have made these three countries nearly ungovernable.  And so to some extent the child refugees we see at our borders today are the fruit of the seeds sown by our country in decades past to the present.  What will we do in response?  We are already responding, through our long connection to the Bethany Children’s Home, which is providing short-term care for a number of refugee children in the process of being reunited with family.  There are copies of an article about Bethany’s work, and another article about the UCC’s response to these refugee children.   I hope you’ll pick up a copy, and respond as you feel led.

Jesus said, “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”  May we at Emanuel Church be among those who will shine in God’s kingdom, and may we plant seeds of good in the lives of all we meet.  Amen.

 

A House Divided

( Scriptures: Genesis 25:19-34;  Romans 7:14-25; 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-23) 

Our scripture readings give us two vivid stories - our Old Testament reading about Esau and Jacob – the basis for the sermon title - and our Gospel reading with Jesus’ parable of the sower – for which we have a stained glass window in the back of the church, dedicated to the son of one of our long-ago pastors, the Rev. John Forster, who had been a missionary in Africa.  Both are vivid, and both seem to point in different directions, and I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to preach on – so I’m going to talk about both of these stories.  Both of them tell us about the awesome God we worship and the unexpected ways in which God works.

 

Jesus tells about someone planting seeds.   Now, when you or I have a small garden and plant seeds, we’re careful about how we plant them – we would want to break up the ground first, and we might want to space out the plants every so many inches, and there are some plants we may not want to plant near other plants, because one might crowd out the other – or, as I once heard it put, “some plants don’t play well together”. 

 

That’s not how things go in Jesus’ story.  In Jesus’ story, the sower isn’t at all careful about where the seed lands, but instead is tossing seed everywhere – some lands on the road, some falls among rocks – again, in one of our small garden patch, we’d probably break up this ground and remove any stones – some falls among the weeds – which we’d likely have wanted to pull in advance – and some falls among good soil.  And the results are predictable – the seed that lands on the road doesn’t sprout at all; the seed that falls among the rocks withers, the seed that falls among the weeds gets crowded out, and the seed that falls in good soil yields a bumper crop.

To some extent, the parable provides its own interpretation – Jesus tells us that the different kinds of ground represent different responses to the gospel.  Some peoples’ hearts are so hard that the gospel doesn’t have a chance to take hold at all.  Some people respond enthusiastically at first – there are some folks who are searching for meaning and will jump on any passing bandwagon – but they have no staying power, no endurance – so that when the demands of the Gospel become too great, they get burned out.    These will say things like, “Well, I tried church, but it wasn’t all that fulfilling and they wanted too much of my time and money.”  Others respond to the gospel, but want to experience the new life Christ brings, while not wanting any change in their lives – particularly changes such as rooting out old patterns of sin – and so their faith doesn’t grow and flourish.  Often these are the folks who may have grown up in the church and been confirmed, but never came back after confirmation.  They still profess faith in Christ, but their lives don’t show it.  And then, of course, there are those who respond gladly to the gospel, and with every passing year their faith is deepened and strengthened by life’s joys and trials.

 

Given that Jesus gave us a parable and interpretation, it may seem a bit hard to know what more to say. Seemingly it is what it is, and that’s all – take it or leave it.  But Jesus’ parables are never cut and dried, and always have multiple interpretations, so  I’d like to spend a little more time on it.

 

It’s thought that, for the early church, this parable provided an explanation for why not everyone responded favorably to the gospel – indeed, that seemingly very few people responded to the gospel.   The early believers had this amazing good news about Jesus, and yet many, perhaps most of the people they met didn’t want to hear it.  The explanation is that not everyone’s heart is ready to respond.  It’s something to keep in mind as we – all of us - minister here at Emanuel Church, where small numbers may tempt us to be discouraged.   We need to be patient – people will respond when their hearts are ready.         

 

This parable tells us about people, but it also tells us about the God we worship.  Remember that when the sower planted, his seed went everywhere – the path, the rocks, the weeds, as well as prepared soil.  The point is not that God is a sloppy gardener, but that he’s a patient and generous gardener.  Every plot of ground, even the hard road, had seed land on it.  Every plot of ground had an opportunity to respond, and each one responded according to its character.  And that’s what God is like – God gives everyone a chance to respond to his gracious initiative.  No matter how unpromising our lives are or someone else’s life is, God gives us a chance, and gives them a chance.  The sower didn’t write any plot of ground off as being beyond hope  – and the parable’s would seem to be saying that God’s like that, that God doesn’t write any of us off as being beyond hope.  That’s good news for us, but also a challenge, in that we’re often quick to write other people off as being hopeless, or even worthless.   We worship the God of second chances, and as Christians we’ve every one of us been given second, third, fourth, and fifth chances and more.  Indeed, our own congregation had considered closing maybe ten years ago, but the members didn’t give up.  The members at the time – many of you – knew somehow that the seeds of the gospel had been planted and had faith that those seeds just needed more time to sprout.  Now, even though we’re still quite small, God has blessed us with new families and new life.  So we at Emanuel are a “second chance” congregation.  It’s a second chance we’re called to extend to others.

 

And here’s where our reading from the Old Testament comes in, that difficult story about Rebekah’s sons, Jacob and Esau.  A little context:  God had promised Jacob’s grandparents, Abraham and Sarah, that God would make of them a great nation, and also made the promise of land to them.  It’s a promise that, on the face of it, seemed ridiculous, because Abraham and Sarah had been unable to have children – Sarah’s womb is seemingly like hardened ground, where seed can’t sprout…., and they were both long past the age of childbearing.  But God made the promise.  Time marched on, and seemingly the promise was unfulfilled.  At one point Sarah tries to help out by letting Abraham have a child by her slave, Hagar – sort of an ancient form of surrogate motherhood, we might say….and Hagar does give birth to a son, Ishmael….but while God makes promises of blessing to Ishmael, he lets Abraham know that he still has plans for Sarah to bear a son.  And finally, at long last, Abraham and Sarah give birth to Isaac.  Last week we read about Isaac’s introduction to his wife, Rebekah.  And that’s where we pick up the story today…..Once again, in a recurring theme throughout the stories of Abraham’s family, Rebekah, like Sarah, had been unable to have children – thus threatening God’s promise to make of the family a great nation.  And so Isaac prayed to the Lord on her behalf, and Rebekah conceived twins.  But it was a difficult pregnancy – Rebekah prays to God, and is told that the twins are fighting inside her womb.  We get the sense that, even before they were born, these twins were at odds, and they aren’t going to get along any better as their lives progress.  Going back to what I said earlier about not planting some seeds next to other seeds because one plant may tend to crowd out the other plant – it can be like that with people as well, as certainly was the case with these twins.  So the twins are born, Esau coming first, and then Jacob, comes out, grabbing at Esau’s heal.  Jacob, who was born grabbing his brother’s heel, proves to be grabby his whole life, taking more than he’s due, eventually taking his brother Esau’s birthright, and later his father’s dying blessing.   Jacob, to put it mildly, is a world class jerk.  He’s the one you’d never want to let out of your sight at a family reunion, lest he start putting the family jewelry and silverware in his pocket.  And yet God showers grace upon grace on Jacob, because God knew that eventually Jacob would respond faithfully.  If God could make something worthwhile out of the life of as big a jerk as Jacob,  don’t you think he can change our lives as well – and those of our neighbors?

 

Esau and Jacob were brothers, but were a house divided.   While Jacob did eventually have a kind of reconciliation with his brother Esau, at various points through the Old Testament, their descendents are hostile to one another.  Today, in the middle east, we have another version of a house divided, with hostilities in Israel and Palestine flaring up.  While our media coverage wants to divide the Israelis and Palestinians into good guys and bad guys, white hats and black hats – I think it’s important to remember that both Jews and Palestinians trace their spiritual ancestry to Abraham – and, as those “grafted into the tree of faith”, as St Paul puts it in the book of Romans, so do we.  And there are Christian communities among the Palestinians – so among those being bombed in Gaza are our sisters and brothers in Christ.  Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities all trace their lineage – physically or spiritually – to Abraham.  In the middle east, these communities are murderously at odds, but they are still brothers and sisters, a house divided, a house at war among itself.  Can the seeds of peace sprout in that scorched earth, amid the bombings?  From our vantage point, it seems doubtful at best.   And yet the God who gave a son to Abraham and Sarah in their old age, the God who plants seed not only in the field but on the path and on rocks and among weeds, is a God who can plant seeds of peace in the Middle East, and make them sprout.  And so, among our prayers in coming weeks, please pray for peace in the Middle East. And if you’re feeling really energetic, you can likely find online organizations working for peace in the middle east in which you can get involved.

 

“But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, in another thirty.”  May we at Emanuel Church be receptive to the Word of God, and may it bear bountiful fruit in our lives.  Amen.