God's Perspective Differs, yet God Loves the World 7/19/20 Pentecost 7A

 Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

GOD'S PERSPECTIVE DIFFERS, YET GOD LOVES THE WORLD

7/19/2020    Pentecost 7A

It was too hard to choose just one text this week, because there’s an abundance of riches in the assigned readings for today. So I used the gorgeous thoughts of Psalm 139, which is among my favorites, in our prayer time. The lesson from one of the letters in the New Testament (Epistle), Romans, talked about how the whole creation is just waiting for God to do a new thing. All of creation wants to be restored. The text from Genesis starts the whole series of stories about Jacob, whose name is later changed to Israel. A chapter or so earlier, he is born fighting his twin for being the firstborn; when they were grown he cheated his brother out of firstborn’s rights, and tricked his father to get the firstborn’s blessing. He’s a twister and a trickster; but after this latest trick, he’s sent away for his own safety. This text about him sleeping on the ground with a stone for a pillow is the first night Jacob sleeps alone and away from his family, and for some reason God comes to him in the first of several encounters. This cheater and twister recognizes the presence of God and sets up some stones as a marker for his experience of God right there. But really folks, wherever he had slept God was going to talk with him that night. God had to deal with Jacob, and any place on this holy creation would do.

            The text from Matthew’s telling of the story of Jesus is another parable about the kindom of God, which starts out a lot like last week’s parable - a sower sows a field with good wheat seed. Once again, the setting is a familiar agricultural one.  But also once again, the sower doesn’t act like a good farmer, and surprises us. Last week, the sower scatters seeds of the gospel over all kinds of land that seems not receptive. This week, an enemy of the sower secretly comes and tosses a bunch of weed seeds, and they all start to grow up together. And the sower says “let them grow.”  He doesn’t make his workers go pull weeds, but lets it be until the end times, when the angels will do the sorting. 

            So there’s a couple themes going on in these texts -  that of God being everywhere on our planet - like wherever Jacob slept that night, and that there’s nowhere we can ever go that’s away from God’s presence and love. God fills all creation, this precious planet that we were made from handmade for, this earth that we live on, grow on, and care for.  All of this is God’s -  God made it, God called it good, including us. It would also be true on Mars or Venus, or even Pluto, which I  hear is a planet again….. One geographic place is not more holy than any other; our living rooms and kitchens are holy when we encounter God there. Our camps under the tree and stars, our ventures to lakes and rivers. We don’t have to be in a certain building to worship God.   

The other theme seems to be that God is not limited by what we think is the right thing to do, or what we judge to be the good. God chooses this trickster and cheater Jacob, who goes on to trick some more folks and be tricked himself, even as God continues to work with him. And the sower in Jesus’ story would not get our kudos for his gardening methods, letting the bad & good exist together.

I’ve struggled with this parable most of my life, because it hasn’t seemed to make sense to me that the realm of God, the kindom of God, would be good wheat and bad growing together.  Of course, my own conservative religious upbringing tended to put things into clear categories - this is right, that is wrong; this is the correct view about salvation, and those others are wrong (only we called them unbiblical, because we were the only ones who were biblical). These people do the right things,those people don’t. These people look like good people are supposed to, and those don’t. You  either are saved in the correct way and go to heaven, or you’re not and go to hell. The sower should have separated the wheat and the weeds right away, and we should hang with other wheat people and avoid the weed people. My home church wouldn’t even let my youth group camp with another church’s youth group because their pastor didn’t have the right theology about when Jesus is coming back - they must have had other errors, if they were wrong on that! 

It was difficult for the younger me to understand how people who were good church people could also be mean; and I saw them be mean, and didn’t know how to feel about it. I tried to root out every sin the preachers and Sunday School teachers  described from my life, and assumed that’s what good Christians did. I could well have ended up in the right-wing kind of Christian practice we see on TV, very hateful to those who believe differently, and intolerant of those who didn’t agree with my point of view. 

Let me share some stories of my gentle Dad and how he was a good example of how an adult seeks to make their own decisions about things and look beneath the surface. In High School, I hung around with the Jesus People, hippies who found God. We had a weekly Friday night coffee house with about 10 guys playing guitar and singing new Christian songs and giving testimonies. And we had Bible studies weekly, too. So I invited all these blue jean wearing, long haired hippies with Jesus stickers all over their cars, to hold the Bible Study at my house one time. My parents were a bit freaked by the idea, and weren’t sure what they felt about me hanging out with these kinds of people. But dad said yes - he dressed in his church suit and tie; and with his Bible under one arm, he greeted and shook hands with each person who came in the door that night. He stayed in our study, towards the back, and my friends were cool with it.  Afterwards, he said, “Those guys know their Bible, Becky.” He changed his mind about these young folks who didn’t dress right or look right or sing the hymns from the hymnal - they did love God. 

Later, off at college, I began worshipping at a local Presbyterian church. You know that I started off at a Bible college, right? I transferred and graduated from Wheaton College later, but started at a fundamentalist Bible college where we all majored in Bible. They approved this Presbyterian church for us to attend, so you know it was a conservative church. I told my parents I was going to a Presbyterian and not a Baptist Church, gasp gasp, and a couple weekends later my Dad drove up and attended worship with me to see if I was getting too weird. Afterwards, I introduced him to the associate pastor who led the college group, and dad quizzed him a bit.  And he decided that Presbyterians were okay, they did love God.    

Dad died before I graduated, but I’ve kept up his example of seeing past externals to whether people love God. We all judge, we can’t help it. We notice differences. And if we’re insecure, someone with a difference can be seen as challenging or criticizing what we hold as true, and can’t get past it.  (And sometimes they do  challenge and critique, and loudly.) I’ve been the one judged - One of my daughter’s little girlfriends, 1st grade or so, came to play at our house in Oct when we had Halloween decorations up - her mom never let her come back because her church taught that Halloween was evil. Another of her girlfriends, in their teens now, was surprised that we could be Christian and Democrats, because her church preached that a true Christian had to be Republican. That time, they stayed friends anyway.

I had begun a call as a college chaplain one month before 9-11 happened, and in the Norfolk area - huge Navy area, lots of military connections. The Isamic Center where Muslim  students worshiped was vandalized, and the chaplains began to lead on understanding faiths. Many students there were from countries where Islam was the main faith, and they had a student group like Christian groups did. I met some devout and God-loving people that challenged my knowledge of Muslims, and when they invited us to a supper after dark in Ramadan, me and my children attended and learned.

I have met people who are gay and lesbian Christians, and found them lovers of God, and doing service to their neighborhoods that few would undertake. The old me would have been totally shocked. I’ve had talks with Buddhist students and adults, and while Buddha is not considered divine, I found the followers of this path to be good people and devoted to the same search for understanding as mine, and involved bettering the world the same as we do in kindly ways. I don’t understand the desire to get tattoos, but my son has a whole armfull, and lots of people his age do - and they are also good and kind people, and many of them love God. 

I guess if God had let me go pull weeds when I was younger, I would have pulled a lot of wheat without knowing it. My judgement between wheat and weeds was faulty; I’m glad it will be the angels that do it and not me. There have been some people along the line that have thought I was a weed, and would have rooted me out. I’m glad they weren’t in charge of weeding either.

So what are we to do, friends, with this field of mixed wheat and weeds, if we can’t pull out the weeds? The best sermon I ever heard on this parable ended like this - “The only answer is, “Grow into the fullness of our “wheatness,” and PLANT MORE WHEAT.” So in this world where we live, look for the common love of God, and leave judging to the angels!   AMEN. 

       

Carelessly Sowing Seeds of the Gospel 7/12/2020 Pentecost 6A

 

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

CARELESSLY SOWING SEEDS OF THE GOSPEL

7/12/2020   Pentecost 6A

            Oh good, I get to talk about gardens!!! 

This was my first response on seeing that this week’s gospel parable is about God as the Sower of seeds.  My second response was that I hope I don’t bore you all because I just get so excited about gardening.  Jesus, here, is once again using an agricultural setting that people then would be familiar with - Jesus is good at using familiar settings - and tells a story to make people pause and ponder.  And once again, Jesus says that this is what the kindom of God is like.  Most of Jesus’ parables are like this - Jesus knows the context of the listeners, Jesus starts with things they understand, common things, part of their culture.  And yet Jesus also makes the story so different, when it starts out to be so similar….he challenges their assumptions - and ours.

            Folks who study the 1st century culture tell us that sowers of seeds used more of a broadcast method spread by hand, not the straight rows of the farms we see as we drive through the country nowadays.  Carrying a bag of seed slung over their shoulder, the sower takes a handful and spreads it around as he or she walks.  Compare that to my grandfather, who had boards notched at 2” spaces, 3” spaces and so on, so he spaced his precious seeds appropriately in his garden - he wasn’t farming large fields, obviously, although he had a large garden.  He measured the distance between the rows, too, so the plants had the correct distance to grow well. 

I have a plot at a community garden over in DeWitt, started by the Pebble Hill Presbyterian Church.  (I’ve gardened in community gardens for a long time, even starting one back in my Norfolk community.)  Most of the folks there have had their plots a long time, and over the years have added lots of soil amendments - compost, manure and such - so that the clay soil bears better.  My plot hadn't been worked for a while, so I turned it all over and added lots of leaf mulch and fertilizer.  My crops have been okay, but not lush.  The soil needs more work, like adding some OCRRA compost.  I don’t do rows, but I don’t just scatter, either - I was influenced by the Square Foot guy, and garden in clumps - but getting good spacing is important. I don’t like thinning things, it hurts me to pull the little sprouts…..although I do eat them if I have to thin… microgreens - that’s the new name.  I set paths between the areas of the garden, so I don’t walk on the actual gardening soil and pack it down hard.  I would never put seeds on the paths.  And I pull weeds - I don’t want them to take over. 

I suppose that 1st century farmers - and all farmers of all time - know about soil amendments, spacing, paths and weeds.  They didn’t have Wegmans  or Tops or Price Chopper to get foods from - their existence depended on their successful farming.  They obviously had knowledge of getting a good crop.  Our Native Americans here were also successful farmers - usually the women, and had tools for breaking up the soil, deer antlers for the eastern tribes;  and knew about the good fertilizer of fish. They knew that beans helped the soil (fixing nitrogen we know nowadays). One of the wise tips from our Natived ancestors is called the Three Sisters - planting corn, beans and squash together - and putting a fish in the ground at the base.  

So the sower in the parable is a strange, profligate, and careless farmer.  I’m sure all farmers worked their soil and prepared their fields, then as now, getting out rocks, digging out wild weeds and so on. What sower, who had to keep back seeds from being eaten this year for seeding next year’s crop, would waste those precious seeds on rocky patches, hard patches and weed-infested patches?  The sower in the story offers seed anywhere and everywhere. Some of it gets no results, some of it gets puny results that dies, some of it gets choked off - fortunately some of it takes off and grows like crazy. 

The writer of this book has Jesus giving an allegorical interpretation of the parable which is interesting, and has been preached on many, many times. We know the view of the parable that was in today’s reading. Since it’s a parable, though, we don’t have to be limited to that take on the story - parables work on us in deep ways, and speak to us at different times in different voices.  There are always lots of levels and many ways to go with parables.  I know scholars of a certain period taught that a parable has one real meaning and we have to learn it and teach it that way forever.  Preachers a bit older than me were taught that as a rule.  Thinking has changed, like it always does, among scholars.  Now the view is that parables are more open-ended and layered, and new ways of looking at them are being proposed. 

I hope you all had an opportunity to read the passage earlier and ponder the questions I put in the resource pages.  We have an opportunity here to imagine and listen to the Spirit talking to us about what the kindom of God is like, with this crazy and careless sower.  God obviously thinks its worthwhile to scatter the seeds of the gospel anywhere and everywhere.  Back in the Hebrew Scriptures, in the prophecies of Isaiah, God says, “ My ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not like your thoughts,”….and, “my words will not  come back to me empty,” or void, or empty-handed as some translations say; but will accomplish what I want.  Just like rain falls on the just people and the unjust people, another place says - God’s word goes out to all.  How the gospel is accepted by those who hear may vary - that’s what the interpretation in our text says.  Others have pointed out that even within ourselves, the words of the gospel may fall on different levels of our own receptivity - some things we may hear and accept and follow, and other words may bounce off a place of unconsciousness in us, or a place that is not ready, not prepared,  not amenable to it.  And as we go through life, we may hear things in the gospel after difficult personal times that we couldn’t hear before.  And I think that the wisdom from the prophet Isaiah tells us that even seeds that don’t seem to take are doing something in the preparation of those that hear it. 

God doesn’t have to farm like we do!  And I believe God is always working on improving our soil.  Faith isn’t static - it isn’t a list of beliefs that we memorize at confirmation, and are then set in our outlook forever.  People experience things as we live - good, bad and indifferent.  They often deepen us, and open our understanding.  Walking with God through all these things over the years gives the Spirit time to add compost and fertilizer to our souls. 

American culture emphasizes the energies of youth more than age, sociologists tell us.  Other societies value and honor age - and by contrast, we see that ours doesn’t. We value striving, accumulating, gaining power, making things happen, getting our viewpoint heard, and DOING.  Our culture doesn’t have a lot of value on reflection, accepting, letting things be, and just BEING, which are more the values of ageing.  It seems to me that, with all ages being here at the same time, that both these energies are supposed to work together - doing and being are important in various times.  Reflection and action are the mark of the wise.  Ways that the older folks have learned are seasonings to the energy of the youn ger folks.  Parts of the gospel that bounced off me as a younger person have grown clearer as I’ve aged, as my soil has been improved and amended by God the gardener. 

There’s certainly been a theme in my preaching these last years, about the development of our spirituality and faith being a call to each of us - that God desires us to come closer, wrestle with difficulties, and understand more deeply.  We are called to be transformed into the image of Christ, reborn, enlightened, made new, living into the new life of the resurrection - whatever the words, faith is a process, a journey; faith evolves.  Those forst seeds that fall on hard or rocky or thorny ground - they do something, they pique our interest; they tell us of the possibilities of this new life; when we’re ready to hear it, the words of the gospel are still here. 

So - if God is like this, sowing the seeds on all kinds of soil, generously spreading the precious seeds of the gospel - not really careless after all - what does that say to how we join this work of spreading the gospel ?  I think it means that we, too, are to be generous with the gospel, spreading the goodness of this message wherever we are and to whomever we’re around - do good to those who despitefully use you, Jesus says.  If an enemy makes you give the them your coat, give them your shirt, too.  The gospel isn’t just for us to share with those we approve of; in God there are no distinctions.  So we provide a ministry to the community through our preschool and none of the parents joins our church - so what?  We are sowing seeds.  So the kids that throng to our VBS attend other churches, so what?  We are sowing the gospel seed.  So we attend a march for people’s rights and nothing immediately changes...so what?  We are sowing seeds of the gospel.  God spreads the good news for God’s purposes, and it won’t come back empty-handed, even if we’re not the ones to see it. 

I think we do have to be ready to talk about the hope that God has given us; to tell why we are so generous, why we are reaching out,why we care.  At some point I hope to have us practicing with each other is a safe way, to tell about what is most important to us in faith.  And I think we have to each bring our gifts and insights to the mission Jesus left us with - no handing it off to the pastor - the pastor’s job is to build folks’ faith  and strengthen THEIR ministries, not be the lone ranger of the gospel.  Christ’s call is for each of us to learn God’s farming methods, and pitch in.  AMEN.

Taking on Jesus' Yoke 7/5/20 Pentecost 5A

 

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

TAKING ON JESUS' YOKE

7/5/2020    Pentecost 5A

I have always loved desserts - and other things, too, of course - deviled eggs, for one thing...watermelon for another.  Good 4th of July picnic foods!  My Mom often told a story on me, that one time she said, What do you want for dessert, Becky?  There’s cake, jello and ice cream - and I answered, some of each!  And she always told how I defended myself  - that the ice cream melts and runs around everything else in my stomach, so I’m never too full for ice cream!  Our favorite was Daddy’s homemade ice cream, and on holidays like the 4th of July, we would gather at my Aunt Ginny’s place on the river, and take turns churning that old thing until it got too hard for us.  After dark we played with sparklers; then when it was good and dark, the parents would set off fountains and rockets, while the mosquitos had their dinner on our legs and arms. 

Mom gave me mixed signals about enjoying desserts.  At one moment she’d tell me I was going to be fat if I ate those desserts; the next moment she’d be asking in a criticizing voice, Why didn’t you try your Aunt’s banana bread or your sister’s brownies? They worked hard on them!  There was no way to please her - I got negative comments if I ate, and negative comments if I didn’t.  Another conflicting message was about school work - she complained that I wasn’t popular enough because I worked on stuff too hard, then turned around and asked why I got a B+ instead of an A. 

That’s what I thought about when I read the beginning of this passage in Matthew 11 - people discounted John the Baptizer because he was so ascetic - living in the desert and eating locust and wild honey, wearing skins….then they discounted Jesus because he ate and drank with sinners!  There’s just no pleasing some people!  We are inconsistent with our expectations and there’s always something to criticize - especially if we don’t want to hear what they are saying anyway. Discount the person, discount their message.  And we all grow up with these kinds of inherited patterns or mixed messages and ambiguities and the resulting neuroses of one kind or another.  In times of stress, these things come out more in us, too.

We’re certainly in a continuing time of stress right now - I saw where a person coined the term “Covid exhaustion” to explain how, even though the immediate crisis and changes are past, it’s hanging around so long that we’re getting exhausted. Unfortunately, it's going to hang around longer.  People are already showing their inability to cope with ongoing stress - wanting to get back to how we were, to quit thinking about the dangers and quit following the precautions. Did you read about those reckless folks throwing covid parties, where an infected person attends, everyone buys a ticket to come to an event with them, and the first one to get  sick wins the pot from the ticket sales???  The other day on a Zoom meeting, the leader asked us how we were doing now that its 3 ½ months down the road - I think we all said a mix of okay days and hard days.  The stress is real and unrelenting, and it adds up.

Most people find it difficult to deal with frustration and negative feelings - and not just with this current crisis.  One of the texts also assigned for today was in the Apostle Paul's letter to the Roman believers, where he talks about how miserable he gets, because the good things he wants to do get sidetracked by this other part of himself that wants to do just the opposite!  I know that experience - like I can look at desserts and know they’re going to throw my blood sugar off….but...but...don’t I deserve a treat for being good all day yesterday?  The stress of fighting that battle daily gets to me after a while, and I find myself pacing the  floor and agitating and opening cupboard doors until I give in and have something that soothes me.  Yes, struggles with all addictions are like that - and worse, when there’s a physical addiction as well. 

We fear feeling our fear; we fear recognizing that we’re not in control.  We fear the feeling that we can’t fix things, like the Covid crisis.  So we fuss, we get polarized, we attack one another, all kinds of stress behavior - because we’re uncomfortable and things aren’t the same.  We don’t mean to be snippy - it just happens.  We don’t mean to be jealous - it just happens. Like Paul, we want to be kind and understanding, we just can’t.   Do you remember that old cartoon picture of the guy with an angel speaking in one ear, and a devil speaking to the other ear? We all know what that’s like.  We are fallible and sometimes broken, we can’t fix the world; and the words of Jesus offering us rest from the burdens of life fall as grace on our ears. 

I had to think about what kind of “rest” Jesus was talking about, because I have to say that I haven’t found that taking on the way of Jesus, the spiritual journey of following Christ, to be easy.   Jesus' words sound easy  - believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved…that doesn’t sound too difficult; love one another as I have loved you…that doesn’t seem too onerous;....be kind to one another…I can do that, with some thought.  Yet when we start to try and do them, it opens up a can or worms in our insides…I don’t want to be kind to this or that person; why do I have to love people I find stupid?  Like the man says to Jesus, “lord, I believe - and help my unbelief.’

 Jesus says that his yoke is easy, and the burden is light.  One of the intertestamental books, continuing the horse metaphor, says that God’s reins are but purple ribbons - another image of the lightness of God’s touch.  Yoke is an interesting word - it’s actually got a connection to the word yoga.  Evidently yoking one horse to another was a way to teach it discipline; so the 4 yogas in Hinduism were ways to discipline our minds and bodies towards seeking enlightenment.  I enjoy thinking that Jesus was saying, Take my yoga on, be yoked with me, learn from me, be trained with me, follow my path, my way to God and salvation.  We might remember that early followers of Christ called themselves followers of The Way - the way of Christ.  Christianity isn’t a set of doctrines to memorize so we get an A on the systematic theology test; Christianity is a path to God, a way of living that is intended to bring us into relationship with God, train us, teach us discipline (in a good way), reveal insight and wisdom to us as we deal with our inconsistencies and broken places.  We begin to be humbled as we see our common human predicament, and we begin to understand and empathize with the sufferings of others.  We become more human; and at the same time more Christ-like. Christianity is more a journey of living into an awareness of God that permeates our whole being and lifetime.  Scripture calls it the transforming of our heart, a transformation from the inside out. Jesus calls it gentle and mild and easy; it can certainly be rigorous, though - it is, however, taken because God loves us, and our love for God grows, too.  So it's not a harshness or a mean-spiritedness, a following of rules out of fear. 

It reminds me of that ancient general Namaan, who came seeking the great prophet Elijah in order to be healed of leprosy.  He came with a huge entourage and lots of gifts, ready to undertake a quest or pay all he had - and Elijah doesn’t even come out to see him, but says, go wash in the Jordan River.  Namaan is insulted - it's too easy - there were rivers in his own country that were bigger and better.  So he’s actually going away, giving up on being healed because he feels insulted!  A servant challenges his pride, so eventually he obeys the prophet - and is healed.  Almost, almost, his issues with pride and status kept him from being healed.  We start to do those “easy” things and it ends up making us deal with our own issues….hmmm….

We are called by Jesus to take on his way, his yoke or yoga - and find a soulful rest; we are called to find a restored relationship to God, to creation, and to one another; which is what we’re meant to be and do. God calls us to be an authentic human, made in God’s image; Jesus offers to bring us into that unitive place of oneness with God and all creation that our soul longs for, our true home, our true freedom. 

The celebration of communion today is so appropriate, isn’t it?  The traditional outline of the sacrament tells us that we gather around this table with believers from all times and all places; each other here, those who went before us, and those who will come later; and with all of God.  We are all one, and all dependent on God.  We take our sacred elements from God’s creation - bread and cup, matter and spirit, male and female, all divisions overcome in our greater unity; a wholeness;... we are fed physically and spiritually, nurtured by our loving God.  One day I’ll write a sermon about communion and go into all this much more - it’s a wonderful sacrament, holy and beautiful - and also so basic.    

Let’s prepare our hearts now.