You do it!

Pentecost 8A, 8/3/14

Matthew 14:13-21

Gracious and merciful God, help our eyes always look to you, and give us our food in due season. Amen.

Yesterday I had the chance to participate in a meeting for the camp I used to work at. They are planning to build a new kitchen and dining hall. This building will be used for programs that happen on-site – but for the first time in this camp’s history, the same building will also have room to store all the food and equipment that groups take out on trail when they do wilderness camping.

The current executive director at camp is really wanting the building to be as useful as possible – and he wants as much buy-in as possible from people who faithfully support the camp – so he has been asking for input from staff alumni. Those of us who used to work in the kitchen or who used to work with the wilderness camping program have been contacted and asked for our opinions on the draft drawings of the new building.

The floor plan of the new building looks great.

But since we were asked our opinions, of course, everyone has something to suggest.

One of the biggest concerns at the meeting yesterday was, will there be enough storage space in the new building for all the food that groups take out on trail with them when they go camping in the wilderness?

It’s a fair question, really. When you head away from civilization, you have to be prepared for any situation. Whatever you need – Band-Aids, toilet paper, socks, a pen – everything that you think you might possibly want to use in the wilderness has to be packed in with your stuff when you enter that deserted place.

So in yesterday’s meeting, we discussed all the stuff that you need to pack for wilderness camping.

And there was some disagreement about whether the new building could handle all the storage needs.

What do we do with all the trail food that camping groups take out with them? Where should we store the 90-pound food pack the night before its owners leave for the wilderness and take it with them?

Do we store the on-trail food in the same place as the food for on-site programs? What happens if a staff member accidentally serves up the wrong meal for their kids, and the wilderness camping program is short on food the next week?

What happens if the people don’t have everything they need before they head into the wilderness?

This is the same attitude that the disciples start with in today’s Gospel story. Where are we going to get the food? What if there isn’t enough? They begin with worry and fear. They are focused on the limitations of their situation.

Jesus responds with abundance. He takes the small resources that the disciples offer, and transforms them into more than enough.

It would be nice to have Jesus along on every camping trip that my camp sends out into deserted places – the food pack would be way lighter!

When Jesus is in the wilderness with his disciples and a huge group of followers, and it comes time for the people to eat, Jesus feeds them. There’s not a huge ordeal. He simply takes the food that the disciples can find, blesses it, then makes the disciples distribute it to everyone.

It’s entirely possible, actually, that the people who ate the free lunch that Jesus prepared for them didn’t even realize that a miracle had occurred in order for them to be fed. The Bible reading doesn’t suggest that anyone other than the disciples watched Jesus bless the food before it was handed around. No one probably knew what a small amount of resources there were to begin with.

The other 5000 men, plus women and children, just know that food is offered to them. They don’t know how. They don’t need to know where the lunch came from, all they know is that they won’t have to go to bed hungry tonight.

The disciples initially don’t believe that Jesus will be able to pull this miracle off.

Partly, that’s because Jesus is basically asking them to be the ones to perform the miracle.

You give them something to eat!

Um, you want me to do what?

The disciples have no idea how they are going to fulfill Jesus’ charge to feed the crowds. And yet, the feeding of the 5000 couldn’t have happened without them.

Well, maybe it could have. I mean, we believe that God has the ability to work in whatever way God wants. So Jesus could have miraculously fed this group of people in many different ways.

He could have asked God to rain down manna from heaven, or just turned the grass in front of the people into a nice tossed salad or something.

For that matter, If Jesus was going to miraculously make food appear – why not have it appear in everyone’s stomachs? Couldn’t Jesus have just taken away the hunger pains by filling the bellies?

But Jesus doesn’t work like that. Part of the importance of this meal comes in the serving. The disciples had to serve the gathered people. Being a disciple of Jesus also means being a worker for Jesus. This meal was special not just because of the miraculous amounts of food, but also because of the community in which the meal was shared.

In this way, it’s sort of like the meal we share here week after week. When we come for Communion it’s not a help-yourself kind of meal – everyone is served the bread and the wine by another member of the community. Communion gains meaning as a sacrament because it is shared in community.

Those of you who have shared Communion with me in a hospital or in someone’s home know that I always ask someone else to serve the bread and the wine to me. I don’t just take it. We don’t take Communion, as if it were something that belonged to us. We receive it, as a gift, every time it’s offered.

It’s in the serving and the sharing that we actually experience God – this is where the miracle happens! That’s what the disciples discovered in today’s Bible story – joy came when they served others, sharing their limited resources, because Jesus commanded them to do so.

The miracle of the feeding of the 5000 men plus women and children happens because Jesus blesses and breaks the bread, and gives it to the disciples – just like when we share Communion.

But the miracle spreads to the whole gathered community because the disciples follow through on it – the disciples are the ones to share the food with the crowds. Jesus almost hides in the background. He’s the reason behind the feeding of the 5000, but not the focus of it. He lets the disciples be the messengers.

There are 12 baskets of leftover food at the end of the meal. There are 12 disciples. Pointing this out is just another way that the Gospel of Matthew emphasizes the fact that the whole serving process was the work of the disciples. The miracle couldn’t have happened without them.

We can learn from the disciples in their role as servers in this meal.

At the beginning, the disciples have a mentality of scarcity. They are afraid. Their resources aren’t enough to cover the job at hand.

But Jesus turns scarcity into abundance, and he uses the disciples to do it.

That’s what happens when we let God use the gifts that we bring to the table – wonderful, miraculous things can happen!

You know, the camp that is getting ready to build this new dining hall used to operate out of a mindset of scarcity, like the disciples.

About 15 years ago, they started a capital campaign to do some major improvements to the camp, including building a new dining hall.

But camp was struggling to make ends meet. They couldn’t cover their operating expenses. At some point, they ended up borrowing money from themselves. The camp spent all of the money that had been raised for the capital campaign in order to cover the regular budgeted expenses of running the organization.

Obviously, this is not OK. And they knew it wasn’t ideal when they were doing it. But they didn’t know what else to do – they were stuck, thinking that they didn’t have enough resources, and they didn’t know when or how they would ever have enough.

In the past two years or so, the executive director at this camp has worked really hard at paying back all that money that was borrowed from the capital campaign.

He got in touch with the people who care most about camp – the ones who would be likely to encourage their friends and relatives to join in the cause. He sent out emails, printed brochures, and posted information online, trying to let everyone who cared about camp know that the capital campaign was back on – we were going to finally build this new dining hall.

To get to the point of actually having that meeting yesterday, talking about the details of what the building might look like, a lot of leaps of faith had to be taken.

The folks at camp started by believing that there wasn’t enough. And then, with the involvement of many other people, they started to believe that maybe God could provide what was needed.

And God did. Last year, all the debt was eliminated and new money raised for the capital campaign. People stepped up to help. They believed in the mission and decided to let go of their own possessions in order to support the common good.

You know, that’s one theory about how this miraculous feeding miracle took place. Some people believe that lots of folks had brought lunches with them when they went out to follow Jesus that morning. But no one had enough for everyone. So no one was willing to share. Maybe they didn’t want others to be left out.

But once the disciples started to share the first loaves and fish, other people started sharing their food as well. They realized that, while none of them individually had enough, they still had something valuable to contribute. And once everyone’s contributions were added together, there were 12 baskets full of leftovers.

I don’t know if this is really what happened. Maybe the miraculous meal happened because everyone shared out of what they had, and the miracle was really in turning people from being selfish to selfless. Or maybe the more traditional understanding is true – the miracle happened because Jesus multiplied the food.

What I do know is that God chose to use the disciples to carry out this miracle. We can’t just wait for Jesus to do it all – like the disciples, we have to be willing to step out in faith when Jesus tells us to do so. We don’t know what will happen, but we know that Jesus will be with us when we take the risks he leads us to.

When we recognize the gifts that God has given us, we share those gifts with others. So like the disciples sharing bread with crowd of thousands, we realize that God has given us blessings in our lives – our family or community or belongings – and we want to share those blessings with others. In miraculous ways, Jesus will spread our gifts so that they continue to multiply the more we share them with others.

That’s what happened in the miracle of the feeding of the 5000.

And that’s what happens in our world, in our communities, when we follow the example that the disciples give to us today.

And God will bless our efforts and spread the love to more people than we could ever imagine.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

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.