Keeping Our Eyes on The Prize

It's not often that the Collect of the Day is what captures my imagination. But this one has a special place in my heart. I once quoted this one in an email to the embattled Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire while he was being ostracized in England during the Lambeth Conference. I felt compelled to write to him as one of those who had known him from my very earliest days growing up in the Episcopal Church in New Hampshire. 

Being a journalist and familiar with the aggressiveness of the media, particularly the British press, I wanted to pass along to +Gene some words that might give him grounding as he was mocked and scorned by the powerful of the Anglican Communion and bullied by their buddies in the press. +Gene responded that the words of this Collect assigned for Proper 12 made him feel like Elijah being fed by the ravens. I was glad that I could be of some help. 

Texts: Romans 8:26-39; Matt 13:31-33; 44-52

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When we began the service this morning… we prayed what is known as the Collect of the Day.

Simply put, a Collect is a prayer that is “collecting” the sentiments that focus our worship for the morning service…and then is used throughout the week with our daily prayers.

The one designated for today is among my favorites.

I love that line “we may pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal.”

It’s a poetic way of saying…

” Help us to keep our eyes on the prize and never lose hope.”

I think that fits well both with our lesson from Paul’s Letter to the Romans as well as our Gospel… with that series of short parables about “the kingdom of heaven.”

Both contain messages which encourage us to not to let all the noise of the temporal… the “stuff” happening around us… get in the way of seeing that there is a bigger and brighter eternal always at our fingertips.

It can be really hard to do that on some days.

There are pressures that press on us at home and work.

There’s the “adulting” most of us have to do with the mundane annoyances of bills to be paid…and jobs where we must carry out a policy or a practice that we may not think is the best.

We might daydream about when life was simpler…but even children aren’t immune from the temporal forces that can knock them off their game.

They face peer pressures to conform and be exactly like their classmates or face that unthinkable feeling of being ostracized.

Like some of their parents…they’re ordered to sit still at their desks when…really…our bodies need to be in motion.

Add to all of this the existential problems…

The waters around the Florida Keys had temperatures above 100-degrees Fahrenheit.

That’s not good for sea life…or for the upcoming months of hurricane season.

I’m sure you’ve all heard that the state of Florida has approved new standards for teaching African American history that treat the institution of slavery as a job training program.

It wasn’t.

This week… the President designated three sites as memorials to remember the brutal lynching death of Emmet Till in Mississippi.

Till would have been in his 80s.

The President used the occasion to remind us that the sin of racism is real… and continues to press in on the people of God today…even while some attempt to hide the history.

Such news… and pressures… can weigh us down.

Because life…the things temporal… is challenging.

And then St. Paul reminds us… that as large and looming as all the ills might be… not a single one of them will separate us from the love of God.

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

These last lines of chapter eight in Paul’s Letter to the Romans are most commonly heard at funerals in the Episcopal Church.

They offer comfort for those mourning the death of their loved one.

But I think they also offer a blessed assurance that we all could use every single day… especially on those days when we feel life is getting the better of us.

Paul puts before the Christian church in Rome all the things that were challenging to them:

They were familiar with war, famine, peril, hardships, distress, nakedness.

In fact…Paul had inflicted some of these on the followers of The Way.

He himself had suffered bouts of punishment and imprisonment as a consequence of his testimony in believing Jesus to be the Messiah.

Despite all of it… Paul asserts that none of those things cancel the power of God’s love to those who are faithful.

He’s cheering the Roman Christians and us on to keep our eyes on the prize… and not to lose hope in God.

God’s faithfulness to us is always there and it grows and grows… much like the mustard seed that blossoms into a bush.

Like the seed parables we’ve been hearing for the past couple of weeks… Jesus uses the example of a mustard seed to a First Century Palestine audience as a way of saying,

“Look y’all: this tiny seed of which produces that trash tree of a mustard bush is a perfect symbol of the kingdom of heaven. You may have it in your heads that it’s ruined your well-planned garden… but take a look at how it’s attracting birds and other life into your little plot of land.”

If we were to do an update of this part of the Gospel, Jesus might tell us  “the kingdom of heaven is like kudzu.”

We all know how invasive kudzu is.

The Soil Erosion Service and Conservation Corps introduced it into the southeast of the United States in the 1930s.

It was supposed to keep the soil stable and serve as an ornamental plant.

But this “wonder plant” quickly took over everything.

As annoying as kudzu might be... it does have benefits.

There are 70 compounds in the kudzu root which practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine use to treat everything from inflammation to headaches.

Animals…especially sheep and goats… enjoy eating it.

So… just as the kingdom of heaven gets compared to a mustard seed… a small seed that grows a huge bush which overtakes a garden….God’s love and faithfulness… is just as large and invasive.

It’s wild.

It’s messy.

And the unexpected always happens.

And it happens through people and things that the more powerful and well-connected might not pay attention to or think are that important.

Trash trees… women baking bread… the field worker become the vehicles for illustrating the way things work in the kingdom of heaven.

God makes use of the ordinary for extraordinary benefit.

God’s faithfulness stretches and bends and carries the faithful like a rolling rapid on a river of hope and love that will not allow obstacles to get in its way.

This is the level of powerful conviction that Paul is talking about to the Christians in Rome…which is now passed on to us for our benefit.  

Neither Paul… nor Jesus for that matter… promises us that following a path of love is easy.

But trusting in God’s love and faithfulness and remembering the call of our baptism… we have that power to tap into to help us resist when those forces that move against the creatures of God try to lure us into a place where we don’t care about others.

That force of love is the life blood in us that will keep us in community and avoid the toxicity of an “us vs. them” world.

We can stand up for justice for all people because God stands on the side of mercy and justice.

We have the power of an advocate in Jesus to give us voices to speak up when the bullies and tyrants attempt to silence those who are oppressed.

Sticking with the Spirit of God…we can keep our eyes on the prize that comes with patience, love, and kindness.

And so again we pray…

O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Weeds, Wheat, the Church and Us

 

I've been getting a lot of good feedback on my sermons lately. It seems that people are finding the topics relatable and helpful for their day-to-day dealings, which is perfect. And I could tell I had the congregation's attention when I started talking about Thai food at the start of this sermon.

Or maybe it was because the service is at 11am and so I usually start preaching at that tipping point time of 11:20...when the tummy starts to say, "Feed me!" 

Text: Matthew 13:24-3036-43

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I am a fan of Thai food.

One of my favorites is a chicken soup with cocoanut milk called Tom Kha Gai.

It’s rich and filling…and mixed with a couple spoonfuls of Basmati rice…I’m quite happy.

A main flavoring ingredient in Tom Kha Gai is lemongrass.

Now…I’m not the best gardener in the world…but our friends and neighbors across the street have often managed to grow some nice herbs that they’re willing to share.

One time… Donna planted some lemongrass.

I was excited.

Especially because Donna… as a professor at Florida State… has a coping mechanism for that end-of-semester grading slam.

She cooks. A lot.

She invites friends over to dinner.

Grading time is good eating time in the neighborhood!

I started dreaming of the phone call…inviting us to come across the street.

Donna was going to get a hankering for Thai food.

She was going to see the lemongrass and think,

“I’ll make a pot of Tom Kha Gai soup!”

It would be delicious.

We’d all ooh and ahh…and express our gratitude for Donna…and the grading she was avoiding.

Well…one day… a friend we had in common stopped by to see our neighbors.

She spotted the lemongrass bending from the garden and into the walkway.

“That’s a weed!” she declared.

And without any hesitation or consultation… this woman ripped out the lemongrass and threw it aside.

When I heard this had happened, my heart sunk.

My visions of Tom Kha Gai…had gone bye-bye.

I suppose one could easily have mistaken the lovely lemongrass for a weed. It is long and green…and non-descript really.

The same was true of the weeds of ancient Palestine, which is probably why Jesus used the image of weeds growing up with the wheat to tell this particular parable.

In the Near East…there was a weed called “bearded darnel” which looked exactly like wheat. The differences between the two plants didn’t become apparent until they had reached maturity.

The wheat grain would bend down; the darnel plant would stand straight up.

As one commentator noted… this is the difference between the properly humble posture before God versus’ the person so full of themselves that they don’t think they need to bow before the presence of the Holy One.

Bearded darnel…also called tares or “cheat wheat”… is a highly destructive weed.

Its roots encircle those of the wheat… absorbing all the ground water and nutrients.

Its seeds apparently can cause hallucinations and even death.

This is one bad boy of a weed.

It makes sense then that the slaves or field workers in this parable would go to the landowning master and ask if they should get rid of this bearded darnel.

It also makes sense that the master says, “Uh-uh; let it be. The time will come, and then the tares will be bundled up and thrown into the fire.”

There was no way to simply “get rid of” the bad seeds of the bearded darnel without damaging the planted good seeds of the wheat.

This week in the office, Kathy saw the Gospel lesson and exclaimed, “Seeds again?!”

Yeah…again…with the seeds.

Only this time…Jesus isn’t speaking so much about scattering seeds everywhere.

This time… there is more intention… a good field ready for wonderful seeds…and then the “evil one” comes in when no one is around and laces this good field with bad seeds of bearded darnel.

Biblical scholars note that since this is Matthew’s Gospel… and Matthew’s Gospel is dated as sometime after the second destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem…the community hearing this is a new fledgling beginning of a church in Antioch founded by Jews living in the diaspora.

As a “new thing” with a community that was bringing in Gentile followers in a large more urban-like area…there were all kinds of tensions between old and new…Jew and Gentile… as they grew the early church.

The thinking is that this particular parable was directed at the early church.

In truth…it could be directed at the church as it began…and as it has been growing… and all the way to our time today.

In the Fourth Century…St. Augustine…who… love him or hate him…greatly influenced the path of the Christian Church… was constantly contending with various groups which had other understandings of who should be in or out of the church.

One of those was a group called the Donatists.

During the very early days of the church… when Christians were getting thrown to the lions in Roman coliseums for sport… there were Christian leaders who… fearing for their lives… renounced their Christianity.

Once the period of persecution ended… and it was no longer a danger to declare their belief… some did a time of penitence and reaffirmed their faith.

But the Donatists… named for Bishop Donatus of North Africa…being the ultra-purists that they were… claimed that anyone who had renounced their faith was not a “real” Christian.

Furthermore… anyone who had been baptized by someone who had renounced the faith… was not really baptized.

Thankfully… it was St. Augustine who put an end to that heresy.

Augustine was the one who successfully argued before a conference in Carthage…that baptism belongs to God…and has nothing to do with the worthiness of a particular clergy person.

This is still the belief in the church today.

It doesn’t matter if the priest… or even the hospital nurse… who baptizes a person in the name of the Trinitarian God is a “perfect Christian.”

The waters of baptism are made perfect in Christ and that’s what really matters… thanks be to God!

Even before Christianity… we can see in the story of Jacob from our first lesson that the faith we have inherited from our Jewish ancestry is full of characters who are less than ideal people.

Why is Jacob sleeping with a rock under his head?

Because he’s running away from his brother Esau who is not just a little bit angry at his younger twin brother not only tricking him out of his birthright…but he also fools his doddering blind father Isaac into giving him the blessing that was meant for Esau!

And yet…this ancestor of our faith has a vision of angels not only ascending…but descending down a ladder… with God there at his side…making promises never to leave him as he makes this land his home.

The up and down… the good and the bad… are both part of the place of God… in the heart of Jacob.

Which brings us back to wheat and weeds… the church… and us.

What is the church but the gathering of the people of God.

Who are the people of God? Everyone.

A bunch of everyone’s who have human hearts… hearts which are challenged every day to live with the wheat and weeds in ourselves and those around us.

While our job is to spread good seeds everywhere… no matter what ground those seeds land on… our job in the church and in ourselves is to encourage and cultivate those gifts of goodness and have patience with those parts that we don’t like about ourselves or our fellow members.

That is some of the toughest work we have as Christians…and as the Christian church.

We know that as we see the various schisms that have grown up as we watch the in-fighting that continues to plague us in our own denomination as well as others.

The call is constantly to leave the ultimate judgment to God… and be careful with the seeds sown in our own field.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

Throwing and Sowing Seeds

It is heartening to have your Eucharistic Ministers tell you in the middle of the liturgy that your sermon touched them. And it's even better when you have a special program after the service that seemingly continues your sermon theme. We had a presentation on the fentanyl crisis, and our speaker from the public health department actually talked about the need to care for the person who might have overdosed... no matter who they are or what they look like. Because we "respect the dignity of every human being." 

Text: Matt 13: 1-9, 18-23

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Welcome to the wonderful world of parables!

For the next few weeks… we’re going to be hearing stories of seeds, weeds, yeast, pearls, and fish.

The kingdom of heaven is like dot-dot-dot.

Parables play an important role in Matthew’s Gospel.

These are the stories that firmly set the beauty and the miraculous works of the Holy in the hum-drum…every day world of the lives of those living in ancient Palestine…as well us those of us still telling these stories two thousand plus years later.

And what a great parable for us to start with here in fertile lands of South Georgia!

You don’t have to be growing cotton or beans or peanuts to understand this depiction of a sower…four different types of soil… and the harvest that comes from it all.

Even those of us with our one garden bed can relate to this story, right?

Matthew conveniently gives us an interpretation of the parable. 

An interpretation…by the way… that Biblical scholars think got added into this gospel later. They maintain Jesus wouldn’t have felt the need to wrap this up so neatly as an allegory.

They believe Jesus wanted this parable to stand on its own.

Parables are meant to get us to stop and think. And this one does.

Because…really…what person going out to sow seed just throws it randomly in any old place?

Farmers in ancient Palestine…and in South Georgia… would have worked the ground of their fields.

They would plow the ground in preparation for seeding it.

Just like today… farmers in Palestine would plant at certain times of the year… with particular crops for the seasons.

In other words… farming was and still is… a carefully planned and intentional agricultural business.

So, imagine being a farmer… and hearing Jesus talk about this sower who’s throwing seed any ol’ place without doing any of that prep work.

That person sounds like a reckless, wasteful fool.

I mean, he scatters seed on a well-beaten path…so the birds come and eat it.

And then there’s that seed thrown on the rocky ground that doesn’t allow the plants to take root…so they dry up.

The seed that landed in the thorns gets choked and dies.

Thank goodness… some of it fell into that plowed and ready soil…and took root and brought forth an abundance of grain!

Not just a small amount, by the way.

Again… for those who first heard this story in Matthew’s community…a harvest of 15-fold was excellent.

To have it doubled…quadrupled or even—wow—a hundred fold?!

That’s amazing!!

So was this sower just lucky?

Or maybe in that extra explanation of this parable…there’s something we might consider.

Jesus talks about those who “understand” the word of God.

“Understanding”…in this context for Jesus… isn’t just an intellectual thing.

Jesus wants us to hear “understand” as something that challenges us.

To “understand” the word of God means to take in something that changes us.

“Understand” means getting a grasp of a matter that moves us in the direction of love.

Those who “understand” in that way…they’re the ones whose hearts are that fertile ground that will bear much fruit…or…in the words of another metaphor… be the light that shines the brightest in the darkness.

We gain that type of understanding through community.

We cultivate our understanding through worship…prayer…the breaking of bread together…as we do each Sunday when we gather at God’s table.

In community…we can encourage the growth and understanding in each other.

Jesus the sower in this parable demonstrates to us that as we tend and care to the garden of our hearts…we can join with him in confidently throwing those seeds of God’s word…God’s love…in our own communities.

We can do it without concern that it might not take root in some people.

That’s always the risk.

But Jesus says still do it anyway…because even those seeds that bounce on the rocks might one day slip through and bear fruit in the person.

And that does happen.

True story about my own journey with God: on this walk with the Holy… the ground of my heart has not always been a place of abundant life in Christ.

I could sit in church… hear all the words… sing all the songs… outwardly appear to be doing all the right things.

But the roots were not deep enough to give me that understanding that would move me or change me and my outlook on the world.

What I did in worship didn’t seem to have any connection to making a difference in the world.

What finally changed that for me was when I heard the call to “show up” on a Sunday morning.

Then the words…the hymns… the prayers… all became real.

The seeds that had been thrown on to my rocky heart… finally made their way into a place where they could grow… and grow.

It had taken about twenty years…but the growth did happen.

It came with the encouragement of a church community…and in my case…it was aided by a priest who kept plying me with books.

This is the amazing truism of this parable.

Because Jesus…that indiscriminate sower… knows that we need to keep spreading those seeds of love anywhere and everywhere…even if we think these seeds are never going to sprout into anything.

We have to trust that some of those seeds will take root.

We shouldn’t be waiting to share the love of God for some magical “right time” …finding the “right people” or even looking just for people who we want to have come to St. Barnabas.

Those seeds just need to get flung everywhere right now…and we don’t know what type of ground is in the hearts of those getting sprinkled with seeds…and that’s OK.

God will do the growing.

We need to do the seeding.

And this is one time when there’s not a person in here who doesn’t have the green thumb required to do that work.

We all have that ability…that superpower.

It came to us with our baptism.

Some of you attended the lay ministers conference the diocese organized last year and met one of my seminary professors…Dr. Lisa Kimball.

For those who don’t know Lisa…she is an enthusiastic and passionate advocate for the ministry of the laity… a ministry that has its grounding in the waters of baptism.

Waters which help to grow the seeds of loving kindness in our hearts.

I recently watched a lecture she gave where she talked about the need for baptized Christians to start living our lives as baptized Christians.

Not so much by “doing” Christianity…but by “being” Christian.

Being Christian by allowing our baptism to be the starting point of our understanding…that movement that challenges our thinking…leading us to respond…by bringing hope and encouragement to those trapped in the prisons of loneliness and despair.

Imagine what the world would be like if everyone brought into the Christian community through baptism in name of God…Father, Son and Holy Spirit… lived our lives in the confidence of that place of loving inclusion?

What a difference that would make in how we address the feelings of separation that so many people say they’ve suffered during the height of the pandemic…and that sense of listlessness that still seems to be hanging out over the heads of so many.

The poet and Christian mystic Evelyn Underhill once said, “God is the interesting thing about religion. And people are hungry for God.”

May we share the growth of our gardens with those hungry for that food.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

 

The Burden of Love

I'm tired. Even without having a single massage client this week, an intentional break that I established for myself due to some physical issues, I am still tired. It has been too hot...with heat indexes regularly above 100-degrees all week. It seems I can't consume enough water to keep my energy replenished. 

So, the Gospel really spoke to me on a physical level.

I'm also mentally tired. In providing pastoral care, I am hearing more and more the same thing from people that I am feeling, personally. I am tired of the attacks on people, especially the most vulnerable people. I'm tired of the tearing down of the institutions, and the norms of how to behave with those whom we don't see eye to eye on issues. 

So today's Gospel really spoke to me on the psychological and spiritual level as well.

What does this passage from Matthew say to you? Maybe what I have said meets you where you are, too.

Text: Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30 and a little bit of Romans 7:15-25a

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“Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” 

I’m not much of a gambler…but I am willing to put money on the table that just about everyone in this room this morning heard those words and felt a sense of relief.

All of us have some burden we’re carrying…some more than others.

To hear Jesus say, “Come to me you worn-out person and I will give you rest” could and should be met with a sigh of “Thank you!”

This particular passage from Matthew is one the few that has stayed with me for most of my life. I remembered it as the words shared right before the passing of the peace when I was a child growing up in the Episcopal Church. My church used Holy Eucharist Rite I from our current Book of Common Prayer… a way to comfortably transition from the 1928 Prayer Book with its penitential language and use of “thee’s and thous”.

There’ve been times when these words have brought tears to my eyes for no special reason other than that relief that they have in the ears.

They call these the “comfortable words” of Jesus.

And they are “comfortable”…especially if we look at them in light of everything else Jesus’ has been saying up to this point.

He’s warned his disciples then…and us now… that people are going to be hostile…they aren’t going to be welcoming…and they aren’t going to won’t listen.

Heck…in some cases back in the days of ancient Palestine… professing Jesus as the Messiah would get dragged into court…or even killed.

In this country…professing Christianity won’t get us killed.

But living out our faith in a real way… in the way Jesus teaches… in that way of true loving and caring for the people who need it most and seeking to mend the wounds inflicted by people and systems… has become harder and harder to be a Christian.

It’s made it almost impossible to call one’s self a Christian when people associate “Christian” with a particularly cruel and petty practice of the faith.

It’s that kind of burdensome practice of religion…that is at the center of Jesus’ petition to “Come to me all that are weary and carrying heavy burdens I will give you rest.”

Because what Jesus was naming were a couple of things: First, there were those who were the self-righteous religious grumblers and hypocrites…and then there were those who the grumblers and hypocrites were wearing down.

One of those being worn down was John the Baptist.

We didn’t hear this part today…but at this point in the Gospel story…John is in prison having called out Herod Antipas for divorcing his first wife and marrying his brother’s ex-wife.

The Jewish historian Josephus adds a wrinkle to that story,

Josephus reports that Herod feared John the Baptist because John had gained a following out there by the Jordan River.

Herod…who was in league with the Roman Empire… worried about any person who might pose a threat to the power structure… and John…with his camel hair shirts and diet of locusts and wild honey…wasn’t afraid of challenging even the most  powerful people, and saying “You ain’t right by the law!”

Now…sitting in jail…John is in crisis.

He’s remembering his excitement that there was one coming after him that would have a baptism of fire and the Holy Spirit…one so much more powerful than himself that he wasn’t worthy to carry his successor’s sandals.

Sitting in jail…he thinks, “Maybe I made a mistake.

Nothing has changed.

Rome is still in charge.

The bullies seem to be winning.”

So John sends word to Jesus by his disciples…wondering…”Are you really the one who is going to make the crooked paths of this corrupt world straight for us? Or is there somebody else?”

I think we can all relate to John.

It can be hard when we see injustices in the world around us…and nothing seems to be changing.

The powerful pick on the powerless.

Those with means get their way.

When society seems unfair… when it feels as if we’re always getting pushed aside…that’s when doubt creeps in.

The longer the injustice persists…the doubt begins to chip away at our faith.

We stop trusting…our hearts grow harder…and we become resentful and angry…and no different from the bullies and tyrants we don’t want to be like.

To steal a line from Paul’s Letter to the Romans, we do the thing we do not want to do. We begin to close ourselves off and become governed by fear not faith.

Jesus…ever the patient one…implores John’s disciples to go back and tell him to stop looking only in those dark corners of doubt in his heart. Look and see that healing is happening… people are getting fed.

“You weren’t wrong, John.”

John…like us… is weary and heavy-burdened. Jesus is ready to give him and us rest.

But first…Jesus has some words for those then and now… who have burdened the Johns of the world.

He looks around at the crowd… some of whom are the powerful ones… the self-righteous…the very religious.

And basically… he tells them… “You wouldn’t know God if God came up and bit you on the nose!”

For they didn’t like John’s religion…with his baptism of repentance in the Jordan River. They called him a drunkard…even though he was stone-cold sober.

And they sure don’t like Jesus’ reinterpretation of the Law and pointing it back toward Love and Inclusion. They call Jesus a glutton…a slob who hangs out with “those people” from the wrong part of Palestine.

We still have that today, don’t we?

 

The smug and self-righteous are still among us in society.

The people who use their religious beliefs to justify withholding God’s love to those who need to hear it the most.

And yet Jesus calls us to stretch ourselves…being wise as serpents and innocent as doves…to not shrink from the call to follow in his path…being a force of love.

This is what it means to take on the “yoke” of Jesus.

To be “yoked” to Jesus is to learn from him.

We must allow Jesus to help us carry on the work of love in the world…work that will not be easy if we attempt it on our own.

Because there are things in this world that will break our hearts.

But our broken hearts are the pathway to understanding and being capable of connecting to people who want to know the God who eats meals with tax collectors…and touches and heals the untouchables.

That’s what Jesus wanted poor John to hear as he sat in the hell of a prison cell.

That’s what he wants us to hear as we contend with whatever burdens we’re carrying on this day.

His call to us is to live.

To live and learn from his life and ministry….and stay with him on the path of love…and engage in whatever way we can to make God’s love known to another struggling in this world.

Not through fear, but through love.

A love committed to repairing the breaches in society…and lightening the burdens we all bear.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.