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WHAT DOES IT MEAN TODAY?

7/30/2023

Matthew 13:24-29

Jesus told them another parable: The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’

There is no formal Message this week – no lesson from the pastor – but rather a group discussion for those present at In-Person church this week. What follows here is simply some notes to guide our group discussion. Interestingly, we found the Kingdom of Heaven stories to be much more difficult to dissect and discuss, than the one longer story at the beginning.

See what you think. What can we learn from them?

** The Man who Sowed Good Seed:
A man sent his workers out to sow a new field. The seed he gave them was good seed, but when it began to sprout they discovered weeds mixed with the wheat (because someone evil had come along at night and sowed bad seed in with his good seed) ...

The five examples that follow are all KINGDOM OF HEAVEN stories, “The kingdom of heaven is like ... “

** The Mustard Seed:
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants...

** The Yeast:
The kingdom of heaven is like a woman baking bread -- she takes a small amount of yeast and mixes it all through her flour and because of the yeast, ends up with a much larger volume of bread – the result is greater than the sum of its parts

** The Treasure and the Pearl:
Two stories that are basically the same – The kingdom of heaven is like a man who found a treasure hidden in a field – or a merchant who came across a large pearl – each quickly ran to get as much money as they could raise in order to purchase the treasure they’d found – they sold all they had to possess the treasure they had found

** The Net:
The kingdom of heaven is like fishermen who lowered a large net into the lake, letting everything that came into the net, and when it was full they raised it. Only then did they stop and sort the good fish from the useless

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SEEDS AND SOIL

7/23/2023

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Matthew 13:3-9

Jesus told the people many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on a path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away.

Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. If you have ears, hear!”

Last week if you recall, we talked about telling stories as a means to link people’s lived experience with a moral or ethical point being taught. This was a tool Jesus would use many times in his attempts to explain the workings of God’s kingdom.

We’re still in the 13th chapter of Matthew’s gospel, where previously we heard Jesus explain just why he told stories. The subject matter of this story or parable, would have been entirely familiar to most of his listeners if they heard just the part that I read at the beginning today. These were not folks who just ran by the grocery store to pick up the things that fed them. They might not personally grow every grain or every fruit they ate, but they lived closer to the earth than most of us do today and they certainly knew where those things came from and how they came to be. They knew the difficulties in getting seed to successfully ‘take’ and produce crops in a dry and rocky land.

But Jesus then went a little deeper hoping they could hear the intended meaning of his words, when, after a few more verses, he came back to explain this parable. He was not, after all, truly talking about agriculture, but people.

Seed sown on a pathway, trodden hard by many feet passing over it is like the word of God’s kingdom in an unprepared heart. There is seed and there is soil but the seed cannot penetrate the soil, it simply lands on the surface – going no deeper. It lies there unsheltered, open to being casually blown away by wind, or picked off by birds. The seed was good, but the soil wasn’t ready or able to receive it.

Seed sown on rocky ground, is when someone hears the word with great enthusiasm and tries to take it in, but never having been properly prepared themselves basically has no ‘root’ to anchor new growth, and the word withers away for lack of nourishment.

And seed sown among thorns? These are the ones who hear the word well, but the cares of the world, or perhaps the lures of wealth choke God’s word with their own neediness, and it ends up yielding nothing.

But as for what was sown on good soil – soil that has been prepared and nourished and waits, ready to receive the seed, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, and the fruit of this seed, in this soil, grows and blossoms and multiplies a hundred-fold.

So, the question I have is: What kind of soil are we? Are we ready and prepared to hear God’s words spoken to God’s beloveds? Are we open to receiving the seeds sown around and in us, or is the soil of our hearts and minds packed hard against any new word getting in? What about the rocks and thorns of fear and anger, mistrust and disinterest? Do they choke out any chance of the word finding fertile ground in us?

I’m not speaking just about what is printed in our Bibles. That’s not the only “word of God.” I mean every one of the many, many ways God speaks with us – through prayer and study and worship – or through the sweetness of a freshly picked fig, the freshness of rain on a dry land, the laughter of a child – or that deep joy we occasionally feel, out of nowhere – a joy we somehow know is shared with Someone, Something, far beyond us, while at the same time, being right here with us. These are all ways God speaks to us.

And then there is a second question for us to ponder: When we have received a word, a “seed”, what do we do with it--what have we done in the past?

Have you noticed that every word from God appears to require a response of some sort? The word might be something like “Don’t worry. I’m here and I love you” – something that doesn’t seem to require any answer but “Thank you”, and our grateful acceptance and maybe a small shift in how we approach the world.

Or it might be something immense seeming like, “Jonah, go to Nineveh, and tell the people there to repent.” To which, as you may recall, Jonah’s first response was “nope, not happening.” We all know that Jonah ended up in Nineveh anyway doing what God wanted. That, too, was a response – just not the one Jonah thought he was giving.

I’ve referred in the past to God in this story as the Extravagant Sower, tossing the seeds of love and knowledge around everywhere in the hopes that some will land on fertile ground in our minds and hearts. Perhaps we could pay a bit more attention.

Sowing and receiving seed is not a one-way deal – it’s a conversation.

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TELLING STORIES

7/16/2023

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Matthew 13:1-3, 10-17

Several days after calling the Twelve who would travel with him as he went around healing broken bodies and explaining the New Kingdom, Jesus rose early and sat on the beach. In no time at all a crowd gathered along the shoreline, forcing him to get into a boat. Using the boat as a pulpit, he addressed his congregation, telling stories.....

Later, the disciples came up and asked, “Why do you tell stories?” He replied, “You’ve been given insight into God’s kingdom. You know how it works. Not everybody has this gift, this insight; it hasn’t been given to them. Whenever someone has a ready heart for this, the insights and understandings flow freely. But if there is no readiness, any trace of receptivity soon disappears. That’s why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward a welcome awakening. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they’re blue in the face and still not get it.

The reading given by the lectionary for today is quite a long one. What I just read is only a small piece of the longer reading but I realized that long reading fell rather nicely into two separate topics. And so, I’ve divided it in half and we’ll discuss one half today and the other half next week.

The gospels, of which of course “Matthew” is one, are collections of stories – stories about Jesus -- and most importantly, stories told by Jesus. That’s what scripture is – stories about God and our lives as pieces of this world of God’s creation. And so it’s “stories” that I want to talk about today – stories, or what we usually refer to as ‘parables’ when we talk about Jesus’ teaching stories. A parable, according to dictionary definition, is “a usually short fictitious story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle.” It’s simpler just to call them stories.

Why stories? Most of them are short and they don’t even seem to talk about anything terribly important when you stop to think about it – figs and seeds and fish – do these sound like the stuff of deep philosophical reflection? These stories about oh-so-ordinary things lie at the heart of all we can ever really know about God, and about ourselves.

It will come as no surprise to most of you who have listened to me teach and preach over the years that I found someone who once said all this better than I ever will. It will be even less of a surprise that the person was Frederick Buechner. The dear man just said it all so well:

It is well [he says] to keep our eyes on the central fact that the Christian faith always has to do with flesh and blood, time and space, more specifically with your flesh and blood, and mine, with the time and space that day by day we are all of us involved with, stub our toes on, flounder around in trying to look as if we have good sense. In other words, the Truth that Christianity claims to be true is ultimately to be found, if it’s to be found at all, not in Rules, not in the Church, or Theology—but in our own stories.

Jesus told stories. And he told stories about ordinary things because those who came to listen to him led ordinary lives. They might not get a more theologically nuanced sermon, but they understood things like putting their boats out into the water and casting their nets, hoping to catch fish. They knew that their vineyards mattered because without them there would be no wine, so if Jesus compared something to a vineyard, they knew it was important.

Talking to his listeners in terms of things they understand on some level gives them “ears to hear.” As we just heard Jesus himself explain in our opening reading:

“That’s why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward a welcome awakening. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they’re blue in the face and still not get it.”

It’s a human trait to hear what we want to hear, whether that’s what is actually spoken or not. So as we go through the next few weeks and hear some stories, some parables, let us focus our listening to hear what is actually being said.

Let’s give Buechner one final word here for today:

It’s important, therefore, to keep in constant touch with what is going on in your own life’s story and to pay close attention to what is going on in the stories of others’ lives. If God is present anywhere, it is in those stories that God is present.

God speaks to us through our lives – through tired muscles and hot sun on our skin; through the rain that falls on the just and unjust alike; through care of the earth we live in. Through the nurture a woman puts into the bread she bakes for her family or the solicitude given when a man sees, not a hated neighbor, but a soul or body in need – and helps him.

So let us listen, with care, to what is being said when Jesus tells his stories, because those stories are all about us.

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"LAUGHING WITH JOY"

7/9/2023

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Psalm 98
Sing to God a brand-new song.
We’re part of a world made of wonders!
Shout your praise to God, everyone!
Let loose and sing for joy!
Round up an orchestra to play for God,
with trumpets and big trombones.
Add on a hundred-voice choir
to fill the air with our uncontainable joy!
Let everything living on earth rejoice!

A few weeks ago, I saw something on-line that has had me thinking about it off and on ever since. It was just a statement made by someone I’d never heard of before. His name is Steve Brown and he’s an ordained pastor who now does his ministering by way of a podcast. This is what he said:

“If there is no laughter in the church, Jesus has gone somewhere else. If there is no joy and freedom, it is not a church: it is simply a crowd of melancholy people basking in a religious neurosis. If there is no celebration, there is no real worship.”

That really caught my thoughts, because I‘ve been in that church. The one with no celebration...no laughter...no joy. The one where people sat quietly in their pews, hands folded neatly in their laps, and...were reverent...but never seemed to be enjoying it.

We, here, are a church that laughs – that shares our happiness together, and I am so grateful for that. We share the important things and the silly things. When one has a reason for joy, we all share that joy. It makes us happy to come together every week to share our lives. And to share God’s love.

We are also a church that shares its worries and griefs. We do what we can to help carry each other’s burdens. And that’s not from a sense of duty, but from that sharing and the love that grows from it.

We are called as a church to celebrate that we are blessed by a God who created us in love and joy. Called to rejoice together—to be glad when we are called together in the family of God. Scripture is filled with examples of God’s people filled with joy and totally unafraid to let the world see and share in that joy.

King David led the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem by dancing in joyous abandon before the Ark, and when he was ridiculed for it...he just kept right on dancing. We sometimes sing that the very trees of the fields “clap their hands” with joy at the wonder of God’s grace. Elsewhere, we are told that even the great sea creature, Leviathan, is playing and dancing in the sea of God’s creation.

Why should being in church on Sunday morning be any different?

Quoting Steve Brown again: The good news is that Christ frees us from the need to obnoxiously focus on our goodness, our commitment, and our correctness. We are not here to sit in judgment on each other. Religion has made us obsessive almost beyond endurance.
Jesus invited us to a dance...and we've turned it into a march of soldiers, always checking to see if we're doing it right—to see if we are in step and in line with the other soldiers. We know a dance would be more fun, but some of us believe we must go through hell to get to heaven, so we keep on marching.

Why do we do that? God never said they’re watching us every minute to see if we are screwing up. God does not play gotcha! with us – that’s a human thing. If God is watching us all the time it’s probably in hope of seeing us enjoying the beautiful gifts we are given daily -- hoping we are noticing and taking joy in the delights of creation.

If you are, indeed, happy about being a part of God’s people – let the world know about it!

Sing to God a brand-new song!
Let everything on earth Rejoice!

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HIS BURDEN IS LIGHT

7/2/2023

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Matthew 11:28-30
“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

We have been doing a considerably amount of bouncing around in and out of the lectionary so far this year, but we’ve only managed to hit a few of Matthew’s readings–and it is Matthew’s year, so I’m going to try a little harder to cover more of Matthew’s gospel for a bit, because even if we don’t see the Bible as inerrant, and historically factual, we still can learn a great deal from it.

Matthew’s account is the second of the gospels to be written -- Mark’s was first, and Matthew was taken in large part directly from Mark. In fact, as much as 90% of Mark’s gospel was copied almost directly into Matthew’s account. Matthew is considerably longer than Mark, so the writer did add a great deal of original work that’s not from Mark.

It was assumed to have been written by the disciple Matthew and thus considered to be a first-hand account of Jesus’ last years, but this has been pretty well discredited in the last century or so. It is now, (based on internal evidence) thought to have been written in the 80’s or early 90’s, a full fifty years at least, after the life of Jesus and so it's unlikely to be an eye-witness account.

Given the context for this reading it would be easy enough to assume that Jesus here is talking only about the burdensome rules that the religious authorities of that time put onto ordinary people. We’ve talked about these before and how many were just burdens and little or no actual help in guiding people in their walk with God.

However, I think it is entirely possible that Jesus is talking here about other burdens as well, such as poverty or illness. Maybe the burdens that society in general place on us, or family, or friends, or work – or perhaps, even our own expectations of ourselves. These last can be the worst.

Society places burdens on all of us. Some benefit us all, many only benefit a few. Some are in the form of actual rules and laws: laws against willful harm in all its many aspects. Others are less formal – e.g., rules of common decency, or social manners. But then there are the other kind of rules, the ones we don’t say out loud. like ‘money is what really matters’, or ‘you can’t be one of the important people if you don’t act just like us’. And, worst of all, those binding beliefs that if we are poor, or ugly, or exhausted, or not free, it is somehow our own fault – we deserve it.

These are the heavy burdens from which Jesus promises us rest. Not by Jesus just snapping his fingers and making those burdens go away. That may not be ‘part of the plan,’ I don’t know, but Jesus asks us instead to share his yoke – which connects us in all kinds of ways.

What he is offering us is to share our burdens, to be responsible for at least half of that load, and I think we can recognize that when two share a burden, unless they are perfectly matched in strength, the stronger will always end up pulling more of the weight. That would be Jesus.

If we are burdened with poverty or depression, grief or fear, pain or failure, Jesus is with us to lighten that load. “My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” he tells us, “take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

I think these are some of the most beautiful words in scripture. The gentleness, the caring. This type of statement is why I choose to follow Jesus. When Jesus speaks here, I hear the loving voice of the One who created all life – the voice of the One who loves us, often in spite of ourselves – the One who will always hold us in love. I don’t know if we actually put enough attention on the fact that Jesus loved us all – not just in some abstract ‘it’s the right thing to do” manner, but really loved (and loves) us—each of us—fellow sharers of this life on this planet.

One last thing – I came across a fragment of a poem this week. It had nothing to do with Jesus....but..... The poem was supposedly written by Hafez, the 14th century Persian poet who has become quite popular in recent years – except that it turns out it really isn’t by Hafez – it’s a fake! That’s really not important to the point I want to make so I’m just going to skip over that right now and concentrate on the words themselves and what I heard in them.

The poem fragment reads like this:

"The small man builds cages for everyone he knows while the sage, who has to duck his head when the moon is low, keeps dropping keys all night long for the beautiful rowdy prisoners."

The more I thought about this, the more I realized that I was hearing it as the perfect poetic depiction of the loving Jesus. I’m most definitely not saying it was written about Jesus or with any thought of him in mind. I’m not trying to co-opt it. I was, and am, struck by how perfectly it happens to describe the Jesus I’m speaking of here today. We all build cages for each other – cages made of our expectations – and Jesus, the one who wants to share our burdens – “keeps dropping keys all night long for the beautiful prisoners." ..... That's such a beautiful metaphor.

Our burdens shove us into boxes, into cages. Maybe we’ve been in them so long we don’t even notice that’s where we are. But Jesus sees us there and comes to bring us keys to free us from those cages, free us from our burdens....for his yoke is easy, and its burden is light.

Thanks be to God.

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WHAT DOES IT MEAN TODAY?

SEEDS AND SOIL

TELLING STORIES

"LAUGHING WITH JOY"

HIS BURDEN IS LIGHT

Rev. Cherie Marckx

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