Where We Meet God

Pentecost 7A, 7/27/14

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

O God, give us an understanding mind, the ability to discern good from evil and the wisdom of Solomon. Amen.

Two Sundays ago, we brainstormed what we imagine God to be like. I had you talk to your neighbors, and you came up with lists of descriptors for God.

All those cards are on this poster. There’s a little space on the bottom of the poster if you’d like to add any words or drawings that help you understand who God is. 

There’s one common theme on all of the cards. Everyone wrote down more than one word. In order to describe God, we had to come up with several adjectives or nouns – several things that describe God’s character, or that give good examples of how God interacts with humans.

Two Sundays ago the Gospel lesson was the parable of the sower, when a farmer went out to sow seed in the field.

We know that God isn’t really a farmer, not the way the people who grow the corn and beans around here are. God isn’t dependent upon the yield of the harvest for a livelihood.

But God is like a farmer. God plants and reaps, both literally and figuratively. God sows seeds, gets rid of weeds, and cares for creation.

All these other words we wrote down help us understand a little bit about God.

God is like a father, a shepherd, a teacher, a friend.

God can be described as powerful, caring, gracious, loving, accepting, joyful.  

But none of these words totally describe    who    God    is.

They just give us a glimpse, and help us get closer to an understanding.

That’s the same technique that Jesus is using today in the Gospel lesson. Using five different analogies – five different parables – Jesus tries to help us understand the answer to the question at hand.

Two weeks ago, the question was, how do you describe God?

Today, the question is, where do you encounter God?

Jesus tells us five parables about the kingdom of heaven. This doesn’t necessarily mean “heaven” like we think about when someone dies. The kingdom of heaven is the eternal realm of God; it’s the place that God inhabits. The kingdom of heaven includes the place where we’re going to spend eternity with God, but it is so much more than that as well.

Any place or time we meet God, we’ve seen a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven – whether we’re talking about prayer, a favorite song, time with our families, a specific part of worship, or the place we will go when we die… the kingdom of heaven exists when we somehow feel the closeness of God.

The kingdom of heaven is like…

The realm of God is like…

Being close to God is like…

You know, all the parables today are imperfect analogies.

None of them can say definitively, the kingdom of God IS. Just like none of our descriptions of God is complete, none of these parables of the kingdom is exhaustive.

As I was reading commentaries on this section of the Gospel of Matthew, people kept talking about how each thing that Jesus compares the kingdom of God to could be an irritant – and yet, God is revealed through the discomfort.

This is mostly true.

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.

Mustard is a weed – or at least, the kind that grew in the place and time Jesus lived was a weed, not something people usually wanted around.

The kingdom of heaven is like yeast.

Bread that’s kosher for Jews, at least on Passover, is unleavened. Remember the warning against the yeast of the scribes and the Pharisees? Yeast was sometimes considered a contaminant.

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure.

OK, this one is harder. One commentary noted that it’s a tiny treasure in a huge field. The treasure isn’t really valuable yet; you have to deal with the large field in order to receive the small treasure.

This might be a bit of a stretch – so this analogy might disprove the point that all of the parables are talking about God being revealed through our own discomfort. But hold that thought… and on to the next parable…

The kingdom of heaven is like a fine pearl.

A pearl starts out as a grain of sand irritating the inside of an oyster.

The kingdom of heaven is like a net full of undesirable fish.

It can be problematic if you catch the wrong type of fish when you’re trying to make a living. Here’s hoping that no dolphins were caught with that tuna. Right?

OK. We get the point that modern commentary writers are making – when we meet God, it can often be inconvenient for us.

Having God interfere with our lives can sometimes be irritating!

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the kingdom of God is always this way. Coming into close contact with God might be like finding priceless treasure in unexpected places. It doesn’t have to be uncomfortable or inconvenient all the time.

You know, this is why we have both Word and Sacrament in Lutheran worship.

Sometimes the Bible readings really hit home.

Sometimes the sermon is fantastic.

And sometimes… the Word just doesn’t speak to you today. Sometimes the limitations of human language just don’t mean very much, given what’s going on in your life,      or the preacher’s life,     or the world.

And so we always have the Sacrament.

We have Communion every week at Cooksville Lutheran Church. That doesn’t mean you have to receive Communion every week. But it is always offered. And the promise of God is that Jesus is always present in Communion. God’s forgiveness of our sins is guaranteed, and we can physically remember that forgiveness when we share in Communion.

You might choose not to receive Communion sometimes – or sometimes, when you do receive, it just might not feel that special to you. Maybe you don’t always meet God in the bread and the wine.

But again, offering both Word and Sacrament every time we worship is a way to help ensure that each one of us – every worshipper gathered – can encounter God closely in one way or another.

This is why we have music also.

And coffee hour.

Everyone encounters God in a different way.

For some of us, the kingdom of God is like when you hear a song on the radio that brings up memories of your beloved family and friends, who danced to that song at your wedding or sang it in a karaoke bar or rewrote the lyrics or made up their own music video to it.

For others, the kingdom of God is like a compost bin, which can smell kind of funky but is really practical, helps you with things you’re already trying to do, and sometimes surprises you with an unexpected tomato plant or something.

The kingdom of God is like yeast. Or seeds. Or treasure or fine jewelry. Or a net full of fish – both carp and walleye.

God meets us in all kinds of places, expected and unexpected. Really the only thing we can plan on when we’re meeting God is that our understanding of everything we think we know will pale in comparison to the amazing ways that God finds to meet us.

The kingdom of heaven is like… fill in the blank! Each one of us probably has our own ways that we feel closest to God. But the most important thing is that God meets us. God is with us on this crazy journey called life. And God finds ways to sneak into our lives even when we aren’t looking.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Seeds

Pentecost 5A, 7/13/14
Matthew 13:1-9; 18-23

Let us pray. To you, O God, the one who answers prayer, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the oceans far away, help us and all flesh come to you. Amen.

The parable of the sower is told in direct response to people being critical of Jesus. If we go back to chapter 12, we will see the Pharisees directly challenging Jesus and debating with him. In 12:14, the Pharisees start to plot Jesus’ death. At the end of chapter 12, Jesus is interrupted by someone who says, “Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” But… Jesus replied, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (12:47-50 NIV)

Just after that conversation – that same day – Jesus went out and spoke in parables to the crowd.

A sower went out to sow…

OK, let’s stop there for a second.

On Tuesday mornings I go to text study with other pastors. Every week we discuss the passages that are assigned for the following Sunday. This past Tuesday, Eva was with us. We were talking about this Bible reading, and she had a hard time following along.

Now, Eva’s English is very good.

She can’t always find the right word to say in the moment, but she can understand conversations just fine.

We lost her when we were talking about this parable.

Why is it that sometimes our Bible stories and our prayers and other stuff in church uses words that we don’t ever use in everyday conversation? And why is English so confusing that words with totally different meanings sound like each other? Unless you’re actually reading along, you might thing we’re talking about a seamstress here, getting ready to hem up a pair of pants!

Let’s listen to another translation of this parable for the sake of Eva, and anyone else who likes things to be in plain, ordinary English.

“A farmer planted seed.

As he scattered the seed, some of it fell on the road, and birds ate it.

Some fell in the gravel; it sprouted quickly but didn’t put down roots, so when the sun came up it withered just as quickly.

Some fell in the weeds; as it came up, it was strangled by the weeds.

Some fell on good earth, and produced a harvest beyond his wildest dreams.

Are you listening to this? Really listening?” (13:3-9 The Message)

That makes more sense now, doesn’t it?

Our Gospel lesson for today continues with an interpretation of the parable. It’s pretty predictable, actually, given the context. Some people in the crowds were just challenging Jesus a few verses ago. Some people came and listened to him for a while but still go about their days largely unchanged. Some people have dedicated their entire lives to following Jesus.

We can connect the dots. We can figure out which people are represented by which type of soil. Jesus’ message – the Word of God – is the seed that is scattered, and some followers are more faithful than others.

That’s the interpretation.

But I don’t think that’s all that the parable can teach us.

A farmer planted seed.

A sower went out to sow.

There is one character in this story, and that is the person who scatters the seed. What can we learn from this character?

Or to look at things from a different perspective, why should we care about the seed in this parable at all? What does it matter whether the seed bears fruit or not? The only possible answer to that is, the seed matters because of the sower. The farmer cares enough to plant the seeds. That’s why we as the listeners of this story care about what happens to them.

OK, obvious question.

Who does the farmer represent?

You could argue whether the sower is supposed to be Jesus or God the Father, but certainly, this parable gives us an image of God as farmer.

This God-figure doesn’t say anything, but actions speak louder than words. So we can learn from the actions of the farmer in this parable.

When God sows seeds, they are scattered indiscriminately, generously, extravagantly.

God’s blessings are abundant.

When God sows seeds, spreads grace, offers blessings, there is not a limit to the places those blessings might reach.

One colleague of mine describes the farmer we meet in this parable as

“an image of a God who continues to shower mercy, grace and love to the world, knowing that some will not bear fruit. This is not a calculated strategy to get a return, but an amazing gift of grace, spread on the hard-hearted, the selfish, and those who are searching for God.” (http://apearldownunder.blogspot.com)

God the farmer isn’t worried about profits or expenses.

It appears that there is an endless supply of seeds.

God plants everywhere – God shares the Word with everyone – knowing that some places or some people won’t receive it well. But that’s no reason not to give it a chance.

See, here’s the thing. When we spend so much time on the interpretation of this parable – this kind of soil refers to that kind of people, and so on – when we focus on solving the equation, we become judgmental.

Some people are in, and some people are out.

But when we remain focused on the farmer, we realize that God isn’t as discriminating as we often can be. God throws seeds all over the place, whether it’s a likely place for growth or not.

Extravagant.

Generous.

Abundant.

That’s the image that we get of God today.

Does that match the image of the God that you know?

Let’s do a little activity.

Think for a moment about some of the words that you would use to describe God.

You can use adjectives like extravagant, or nouns like farmer – you can even imagine a picture if you’re feeling creative – any word or image that you think can reveal something about God is fair game.

         How would you describe God?

[pause]

Got some ideas? We’re going to write down these words and images, and I’m going to actually put together a display for us to look at later. The ushers have some cards that they’re going to pass out in just a moment.

But I’m going to ask you to stretch outside of your comfort zone for a minute first.

In just a moment, I’d like you to find someone else in the congregation – you can find a partner or do groups of threes and fours – and share what some of those words for God are. See if any of your words match. And then, as a group, write all the words you can think of on the one card that the ushers will give you. Got it? OK, let’s find a partner.

[pause – ushers distribute cards of various colors, and pens/pencils]

Whenever you finish, the ushers are going to collect the cards from you again. They will be brought forward during the offering, later in the service. Today all of us are offering up something to God – a piece of our faith, a way of understanding who God is.

[pause – encourage writing]

I’ll keep talking here, and whenever you’re done writing or drawing, flag down the ushers.

Biblical scholars categorize today’s parable as a parable of the kingdom – meaning, it’s one of the stories that Jesus tells that gives us a picture of the kingdom of God. One author calls this category “the disciple’s life before God.”

(Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus, p.180)

Focusing on the seeds or on the soil doesn’t really give us a good picture of the kingdom of God. When we dwell there for too long, we think only about the disciple’s life and forget that the life is meant to be lived in the presence of God.

When we turn our attention to the farmer – to God – then we are conscientious of every aspect of our lives taking place in God’s presence.

Jesus’ parable today helps us learn more about God, and hopefully helps us grow closer to God in our lives.

There’s a beautiful blessing based on this parable in Sundays and Seasons, the resource that we use for our worship prayers. Receive the blessing: (sundaysandseasons.com)

May God the sower

make you good and fertile soil.

May Christ the seed

bloom and grow in your words and actions.

May the fruitful Spirit

bring forth a bountiful yield in your lives.

God the Father, + Son, and Holy Spirit

bless you now and forever.

Amen.

Rest

Pentecost 4A, 7/6/14

This was preached as the third part of a shared sermon at an ecumenical worship service. Other preachers shared the first two segments of the sermon which are summarized briefly, and the sermon below was intended to wrap together the ideas presented and move us forward into the rest of worship. Immediately after the sermon, we sang Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, and then a confession of sins and assurance of pardon followed. 

Part 1 – Matthew 11:15-19

We tend to be busy, distracted, and dismissive.

We insulate ourselves with criticism.

Jesus says there’s no winning with us!

Part 2 – Matthew 11:20-27

In Jesus, God shows up in a way that has never happened before or since, and yet many do not respond to the call.

This is a call to repentance for us – turning our lives around.

It’s not about what we believe about but who we believe in – follow Jesus and let him change your life!

Part 3 – Matthew 11:28-30

Have you ever gone on a great vacation – seen the sights, enjoyed the food – filled every moment of your time away with great adventures and wonderful memories – and then you return home and you realize that there’s no milk in the fridge, the lawn needs to be mowed (or the sidewalk shoveled), and you have to go back to work in the morning and don’t have any clean underwear to put on?

How many times have we heard, I need a vacation from my vacation!

Sometimes we overthink our leisure time. You know? I was at a friend’s house the other day and I noticed her calendar. She had evening activities written in for her husband and her to do together every night. Mondays were TV, Tuesdays were reading, Wednesdays were video games, and so on. 

Sure, all those things are fun, and sure, it’s good to set time aside for them or you’ll never get around to doing them… but sometimes we all need a break from schedules in general.

What we’re looking for is rest.

Rest isn’t boredom – it isn’t when there’s nothing to do.

Rest isn’t the same as sleeping. We all know that it’s possible to wake up just as tired and overwhelmed as we were before we hit the sack.

Rest isn’t leisure activities or hobbies – it isn’t when we schedule time or spend money to participate in some planned activity.

Those things can all be restful, but that’s not the kind of rest into which Jesus invites us today.

Rest – divine rest, rest for our souls – is when we reorient ourselves to God – when we stay focused on our purpose or calling in life – when we focus on that relationship with Jesus that Pastor Josh was just talking about.

Rest isn’t just a break from the other stuff in our life that can get exhausting – rest is a good in and of itself, it’s a gift, it can be God’s way of speaking to us.

There’s a phenomenal children’s book that I hope all of you have read at some point in your life.

The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein.

This story tells of the relationship between a boy and a tree. They are best friends and partners in the adventure of life. As the boy grows up, he has specific needs throughout his life, and at each step along the way, the tree helps him, giving herself away to him sacrificially.

At the end of the story, the two reunite, as a stump and an old man.

And after a long time the boy came back again.

“I am sorry, Boy,” said the tree…

I wish that I could give you something… but I have nothing left. I am just an old stump. I am sorry…”

“I don’t need very much now,” said the boy, “just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired.”

“Well,” said the tree, straightening herself up as much as she could, “well an old stump is good for sitting and resting. Come, Boy, sit down. Sit down and rest.”

And the boy did.

And the tree was happy.

That is rest.

Peace. Fulfillment. Completion. Rest for your souls.

In order to achieve that rest, we turn to the other promise in this Gospel lesson. That other promise is, Jesus lightens our burdens.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens… for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

This is good news! When we choose to follow Jesus, we exchange our heavy worldly concerns for the lighter burden of discipleship.

I hope you noticed that Jesus does not say, “follow me and all your cares will disappear.” That’s not how this Christianity thing works. We still experience anger and grief and frustration. We can still lose our jobs and our homes and our loved ones – being Christian doesn’t change the existence of burdens in our lives.

It changes the weight of our burden.

Imagine that you’re carrying something really heavy.

I remember one particular dresser that had been handed down through the generations in my family… I’m sure you can think of something extraordinarily heavy that you’ve had to move at some point in your life.

OK. Now imagine what it would feel like to lift it on your own. Crushing, right?

What if half the weight just got lifted off your shoulders?

There, that’s better. Jesus just came along with his lighter yoke. It’s like placing the super heavy object underwater – all of a sudden, it doesn’t weigh as much!

Lay that burden on Jesus and you’ll find that somehow, you can bear it now. The weight of that dresser – or anger – or grief – is diminished.

But guess what, folks? It gets even better than that.

When we invite Jesus to share the load with us, we don’t just get help from him – we get the support of an entire community.

Imagine if everyone here in worship today were to reach out and help carry that heavy burden you’ve been envisioning. With the assistance of a hundred other sets of hands, your burden will effectively become weightless!

This is the blessing of Christian community. Our church families can share the burdens with us and help to lighten our yokes – the job of a congregation is to do the work of Jesus.

There’s a really popular song on this theme that I’m sure most of the kids – and parents – who are here could sing about releasing your burdens – about letting go.

We don’t need to sing it now – but for any of you who have seen the movie Frozen, the freedom that we see in the character who sings Let It Go is like the freedom that we can find when we give our burdens to Jesus.

Not the lyrics so much – but the liberation, the freedom, the weightlessness.

Have any of you ever done trust falls before?

You know – one person falls back, with complete trust that there will be hands waiting to catch them. It’s a great teambuilding activity. 

There are a couple of different ways you can do trust falls.

One way involves two people. One person stands with feet planted in such a way that they can support significantly more than their own body weight. The other person faces away and tips backwards, without bending at the knees or the waist.

The first person trusts the second with their entire body weight. They don’t actually weigh any less at the end of it – but they realize that they don’t have to be responsible for their entire weight if they just trust someone else to help them.

That’s like what happens when we give our burdens to Jesus.

OK, now for the next way to do trust falls. This one is a little more adventurous.

One person stands up on something – say, the end of a picnic table.

There are lots of people standing below, ready to help out. The people below have to “zipper” their hands – alternating support from one side to the other. When the person standing at a height is ready, she or he falls back – and the community catches.

For just a second, the person falling feels weightless.

Then they come back to earth again, and even though they’re not weightless any more, they know that there are many hands willing to help carry the load.

That’s like what happens when we share our burden with Christ and a community of Christians. This is the promise, the blessing, and the good news of today’s Bible reading.

Jesus brings us rest – in Christ, our burdens become light.

Thanks be to God. Amen.