This Sunday I was the preacher at St Matthew's Outdoor Eucharist and Parish Picnic. I jotted some notes down and it turned into a little homily. What I actually preached was connected to these thoughts.
I think. ;-)
Our Gospel today is chock full of parables---rapid fire parables that get a bit more obscure as they go on. From the tiniest of all seeds growing into the mightiest of all bushes to the net catching every kind of fish known to humankind, these parables are trying to tel
l us what the kingdom of heaven is like---what it is like when God’s vision for all creation is reached----It’s not easy to describe, although Jesus tries his best. The kingdom of heaven is like…well it’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced and it, when you get a glimpse of it, is the most peaceful and real and awesome thing you’ve ever experienced. In other words, the Kingdom of Heaven, the creation as God created it to be is…..
Something to be experienced more than described.
The kingdom of heaven is not much something you can figure out or go out and find. You don’t shop for it at a store or order it at amazon.com. You can’t decide you’re going to get the kingdom through 7 easy steps you heard on an infomercial.
No, the kingdom of heaven is more like something that you stumble upon while doing something else, such as making dinner, washing dishes or driving to work.
There is, for most of us, something of an “Ah ha!;” quality, an experience of “Oh my goodness, now I get it!” sensation about the kingdom of heaven. It is not always sudden; indeed it is more often a slow, gradual and growing awareness of what God is really like and what God is actually expecting of God’s people in the world.
But it always has an epiphany feeling to it. We go along, thinking thatby following the Golden rule, by trying to incorporate the teachings of Jesus into our daily lives we will, in the end, gain entrance into God’s kingdom.
But here’s the deal---The kingdom of heaven isn’t supposed to be a place we end up, it’s supposed to be a place we create…right here on earth…or more accurately, the kingdom of heaven is here on earth---it’s right here, right among us, all the time…but we have a really difficult time noticing it, and it has a really difficult time breaking through, because we have all of the stuff of This World, blocking it.
But when we quiet ourselves enough, when we slow down enough, when we listen enough, when we look enough, when we turn away from the phones, and the computers and the traffic, and the to-do lists and and and….when we put ourselves in the position to receive—to notice—to see---to hear, we will, in the simplest things, in the mundane things, in the ordinary things, discover the great and awe-inspiring kingdom of heaven…right here on earth.
Monday, July 31, 2017
Sunday, July 16, 2017
Sometimes We're Wheat, Sometimes We're Weeds Proper 10 Yr A St John's Youngstown
+Some days we're wheat, some days we're weeds.
Today our Gospel is the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds. Or, as it was called in the old days: The Parable of the Wheat and the Chaff.
Parables are confusing because they often don’t mean what they appear to say. If we just stay on the surface of the story we won’t really “get it”-- and I don’t know about you but I don’t want to stay on the top of this parable! On the surface, it suggests there’s an “in group” and an “out group,” that God would take God’s own beloved children and banish them to eternal damnation and hellfire.
I can’t believe that. I just won’t believe that. It doesn’t gibe with how I experience God. And, it makes me nuts to think that someone who has been injured by the church before, someone who’s been demeaned or degraded by someone “in the name of God” would choose today to finally walk back through these doors and hear this parable, without any explanation. Parables need to be dug into…for only in digging can we reach the richness of the dark and fertile soil that makes up this story.
On the surface, the world seems divided into two camps—the good and the evil. The in and the out. The wheat and the weed. But it just isn’t that cut and dry. As anyone who’s tried to weed a garden can attest, weeds can look like flowers and flowers can look like weeds. At first glance, it’s really difficult to know what you’re looking at: Is it a flowerI? Or is it a weed?
Do you know that hostas, those ubiquitous plants of hearty character and wide variety, were originally considered a weed? But over time and through some intentional taming, we now consider it a viable garden plant. Which is wheat and which is weed? It’s hard to tell. Today’s weed just may be tomorrow’s wheat. (or hosta!)
We all have weeds. We all have wheat. We all have both, we all are both. Some days we’re more weedy than others. And, thankfully, other days we’re more wheaty. Some days we’re who we want to be, other days we aren’t.
This is because the Evil One, the sower of weeds, lurks within each of us-- it's not an outside force—it’s an inside job. As St. Paul says in today’s Epistle: “if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” Throughout biblical history are stories of people being jealous of each other, of desperately wanting what another has. Not because we donLt have enough, but because somehow we want the other person to have less. We don’t like this part of ourselves, but this part is within all of us…just looks t what happened between Cain and Abel and then as we heard earlier, Jacob and Esau? Working to live into the fullness of God means that we have to turn away from the deep-seated ways of the past—-of dog eat dog, every man and woman for themselves mentality. We need to lose the old ways of decay and death, and embrace the new way of growth and life.
We can hold on to the old ways or we can let them go. It’s up to us. We can stay as a weed or we can grow into wheat. Weeds are easy—they grow fast, need virtually no tilling, no fertilizing, no encouragement to grow. Wheat—-Gorgeous flower gardens, rows of crops are trickier—they need attention, nurture, and care.
The theologian Karl Rahner says that in all we do we’re either moving toward God or away from God. When we’re moving toward God, we’re letting the light of Christ nurture us and care for us; when we move toward God we are tilling our souls with faith, belief and hope.
When we’re moving away from God we’re letting the darkness of doubt, the uneasiness of disbelief and the decay of despair rule. These doubts, disbelief and despair are the stuff of weeds, the stuff of Not-God, the stuff of darkness—-blocking us from the fullness of God.
Sometimes we are wheat…and sometimes we are weeds. Sometimes we do the work of God—-feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, standing up for the abused and the discarded…and sometimes the darkness wins and we serve ourselves instead of our neighbor, we pass by the lost, we dismiss the downtrodden and we fail to respect the dignity of every human being, regardless of the color of their skin, the gender of their beloved or the name they use for God.
But don’t fear when the weeds infiltrate our life, when our choices lead us astray, when our faith withers, don’t give up on the harvest— focus on the good: the wheat, the flowers, the stuff of God in your life.
Because, when we focus on the Good, the “not of God” stuff will be overcome, overwrought and overthrown by a power greater than any weed, a force stronger than any evil, a Love bigger than any Doubt.
“Let anyone with ears listen:” God doesn’t toss any of us into an unquenchable fire.
We may be weeds a lot more often that we wish. We may move away from God more frequently than we care to admit, but once we settle into the promise of our faith, once we till the soil of our souls, once we dig deep enough into our desire for the Good, we’ll discover that God has always and will always be there, deep within us, ready to toss away the chaff of fear and the weeds of doubt, freeing us to bloom into the bouquet of Love which is God. +
Today our Gospel is the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds. Or, as it was called in the old days: The Parable of the Wheat and the Chaff.
Parables are confusing because they often don’t mean what they appear to say. If we just stay on the surface of the story we won’t really “get it”-- and I don’t know about you but I don’t want to stay on the top of this parable! On the surface, it suggests there’s an “in group” and an “out group,” that God would take God’s own beloved children and banish them to eternal damnation and hellfire.
I can’t believe that. I just won’t believe that. It doesn’t gibe with how I experience God. And, it makes me nuts to think that someone who has been injured by the church before, someone who’s been demeaned or degraded by someone “in the name of God” would choose today to finally walk back through these doors and hear this parable, without any explanation. Parables need to be dug into…for only in digging can we reach the richness of the dark and fertile soil that makes up this story.
On the surface, the world seems divided into two camps—the good and the evil. The in and the out. The wheat and the weed. But it just isn’t that cut and dry. As anyone who’s tried to weed a garden can attest, weeds can look like flowers and flowers can look like weeds. At first glance, it’s really difficult to know what you’re looking at: Is it a flowerI? Or is it a weed?
Do you know that hostas, those ubiquitous plants of hearty character and wide variety, were originally considered a weed? But over time and through some intentional taming, we now consider it a viable garden plant. Which is wheat and which is weed? It’s hard to tell. Today’s weed just may be tomorrow’s wheat. (or hosta!)
We all have weeds. We all have wheat. We all have both, we all are both. Some days we’re more weedy than others. And, thankfully, other days we’re more wheaty. Some days we’re who we want to be, other days we aren’t.
This is because the Evil One, the sower of weeds, lurks within each of us-- it's not an outside force—it’s an inside job. As St. Paul says in today’s Epistle: “if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” Throughout biblical history are stories of people being jealous of each other, of desperately wanting what another has. Not because we donLt have enough, but because somehow we want the other person to have less. We don’t like this part of ourselves, but this part is within all of us…just looks t what happened between Cain and Abel and then as we heard earlier, Jacob and Esau? Working to live into the fullness of God means that we have to turn away from the deep-seated ways of the past—-of dog eat dog, every man and woman for themselves mentality. We need to lose the old ways of decay and death, and embrace the new way of growth and life.
We can hold on to the old ways or we can let them go. It’s up to us. We can stay as a weed or we can grow into wheat. Weeds are easy—they grow fast, need virtually no tilling, no fertilizing, no encouragement to grow. Wheat—-Gorgeous flower gardens, rows of crops are trickier—they need attention, nurture, and care.
The theologian Karl Rahner says that in all we do we’re either moving toward God or away from God. When we’re moving toward God, we’re letting the light of Christ nurture us and care for us; when we move toward God we are tilling our souls with faith, belief and hope.
When we’re moving away from God we’re letting the darkness of doubt, the uneasiness of disbelief and the decay of despair rule. These doubts, disbelief and despair are the stuff of weeds, the stuff of Not-God, the stuff of darkness—-blocking us from the fullness of God.
Sometimes we are wheat…and sometimes we are weeds. Sometimes we do the work of God—-feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, standing up for the abused and the discarded…and sometimes the darkness wins and we serve ourselves instead of our neighbor, we pass by the lost, we dismiss the downtrodden and we fail to respect the dignity of every human being, regardless of the color of their skin, the gender of their beloved or the name they use for God.
But don’t fear when the weeds infiltrate our life, when our choices lead us astray, when our faith withers, don’t give up on the harvest— focus on the good: the wheat, the flowers, the stuff of God in your life.
Because, when we focus on the Good, the “not of God” stuff will be overcome, overwrought and overthrown by a power greater than any weed, a force stronger than any evil, a Love bigger than any Doubt.
“Let anyone with ears listen:” God doesn’t toss any of us into an unquenchable fire.
We may be weeds a lot more often that we wish. We may move away from God more frequently than we care to admit, but once we settle into the promise of our faith, once we till the soil of our souls, once we dig deep enough into our desire for the Good, we’ll discover that God has always and will always be there, deep within us, ready to toss away the chaff of fear and the weeds of doubt, freeing us to bloom into the bouquet of Love which is God. +
Sunday, July 2, 2017
Darkness Almost Wins: The Binding of Isaac Proper 8 Yr A July 2, 2017 Trinity, Hamburg
+I so wanted to preach on the gospel this morning. I wanted to speak with you about how what we do---every single thing that we do----is representative of our faith. How in these few verses from Matthew, Jesus is telling us—what you do to unto others, you are doing unto me.
I really wanted to preach on that…but because our first reading is one of the most disturbing stories in all the Bible, I have to preach about the attempted sacrifice, the binding, of Isaac.
In this story, Abraham passively accepts what he believes God is calling him to do—kill his son. This is the same Abraham who’s argued with God, laughed at God, and debated with God. Now, suddenly he just blindly accepts that God is calling him to complete this heinous act? He doesn’t argue with God about this? How can this be?
And then there’s God. God is asking Abraham to kill this son that God proclaimed would produce more descendants than stars in the sky? God commands Abraham to kill him? As a test of Abraham’s faith?!
What is this some bizarre, twisted Divine game?
I don’t know about you, but the God I worship, the God I adore, doesn’t do things like this.
At least, in my better moments I believe that the God of my understanding doesn’t do things like this.
But then there are those other moments.
You know, those moments when a young man walks into an elementary school and massacres first graders.
When a man claiming to want to pray with a bible study group shots them in cold blood at Mother Emmanuel AME Church
When a man spewing hateful rhetoric assassinates party=goers at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
When my friend Ian, at age 21, takes his own life because the depression that plagued him gathered up enough darkness to, in that discrete moment in time, block out the light and love of God, leading to his suicide.
When a nagging health issue turns out to be a lethal form of cancer.
These moments, the moments when the most faithful among us cry out “where was God? Where is God? How could God?” lead us to ask, “why?” And lead us to perhaps believe that our God actually could have asked Abraham to kill Isaac.
Do we have a bitter God? A vengeful God, a hate-filled God, an arbitrary God?
Of course not.
Then…why do horrific things happen? How? How, with an all powerful, loving Creator can such bad and awful things happen?
Well the answer may sound polly-anish to some, insufficient to others, terrifying to still others, but I think the reason horrible things happen is because while our God is an awesome God, God is not the only force at work in this world. You may call it demons, or Satan, or evil…it doesn’t matter what we call it…but there is a deep darkness in this world and it has been in this world since that infamous disobedience by the first humans. It’s a darkness that, as shown through the cunning serpent in the Garden of Eden story, is incredibly attractive to us. The job of us as Christians is to counter-act that cunning darkness in all we do.
It’s what Jesus is talking about in this morning’s Gospel. We’re the foot soldiers of God in this world. We know the task…we’re to give to those in need, we’re to lift up the downtrodden, help mend the broken hearted, stand up and speak out against injustice. We’re to overcome the forces of darkness with the light of love. We are to do this. Constantly.
Why?
Because the forces of darkness in this world are relentless. They’re constantly re-inventing themselves, they’re cunning, baffling, and powerful. And it’s up to us to defeat them.
What propelled my friend Ian to take his own life three years ago this week? Despair.
What causes madmen to enter schools, churches and nightclubs to kill at will? Cunning Evil.
What pushes a suicide bomber into such a warped sense of faith that they think blowing up themselves and countless others is the work of God? A baffling mis-interpretation of God fueled by the Evil One.
There are forces at work in our world that need to be pushed back. They need to be challenged. They need to be defeated. And that happens through us. With every act of love that we do, darkness takes a body blow. With every act of charity, evil takes a hit, with every act of justice, hatred loses more of its grip.
And the more evil, darkness, hate and despair are pushed back, the closer we are to seeing the Kingdom of God in this world.
But, we still have the nagging issue of Abraham and Isaac.
How could God ask Abraham to kill Isaac?
The clear and certain answer is this: God didn’t.
And as Abraham was binding Isaac, as he lay him on the pile of wood, as he prepared to plunge that knife into him, God was screaming, God was begging, God was pleading with Abraham to stop. For God knew that the voice Abraham heard was not Divine at all.
It was the cunning voice of darkness, the same voice of darkness that propels terrorists, murderers, rapists and yes even my friend Ian. For the forces of darkness in this world are indeed cunning and baffling and can only, will only be forever silenced, through Love. Our love. Given to one another fully and thoroughly. No exceptions.
So.. maybe I did preach the Gospel after all. There is Evil and there is Goodness. There is Hate and there is Love.
And by living our lives as Jesus taught us to live them, Goodness will prevail, Love will reign and God? God will find it good…very very good.
Amen.
I really wanted to preach on that…but because our first reading is one of the most disturbing stories in all the Bible, I have to preach about the attempted sacrifice, the binding, of Isaac.
In this story, Abraham passively accepts what he believes God is calling him to do—kill his son. This is the same Abraham who’s argued with God, laughed at God, and debated with God. Now, suddenly he just blindly accepts that God is calling him to complete this heinous act? He doesn’t argue with God about this? How can this be?
And then there’s God. God is asking Abraham to kill this son that God proclaimed would produce more descendants than stars in the sky? God commands Abraham to kill him? As a test of Abraham’s faith?!
What is this some bizarre, twisted Divine game?
I don’t know about you, but the God I worship, the God I adore, doesn’t do things like this.
At least, in my better moments I believe that the God of my understanding doesn’t do things like this.
But then there are those other moments.
You know, those moments when a young man walks into an elementary school and massacres first graders.
When a man claiming to want to pray with a bible study group shots them in cold blood at Mother Emmanuel AME Church
When a man spewing hateful rhetoric assassinates party=goers at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
When my friend Ian, at age 21, takes his own life because the depression that plagued him gathered up enough darkness to, in that discrete moment in time, block out the light and love of God, leading to his suicide.
When a nagging health issue turns out to be a lethal form of cancer.
These moments, the moments when the most faithful among us cry out “where was God? Where is God? How could God?” lead us to ask, “why?” And lead us to perhaps believe that our God actually could have asked Abraham to kill Isaac.
Do we have a bitter God? A vengeful God, a hate-filled God, an arbitrary God?
Of course not.
Then…why do horrific things happen? How? How, with an all powerful, loving Creator can such bad and awful things happen?
Well the answer may sound polly-anish to some, insufficient to others, terrifying to still others, but I think the reason horrible things happen is because while our God is an awesome God, God is not the only force at work in this world. You may call it demons, or Satan, or evil…it doesn’t matter what we call it…but there is a deep darkness in this world and it has been in this world since that infamous disobedience by the first humans. It’s a darkness that, as shown through the cunning serpent in the Garden of Eden story, is incredibly attractive to us. The job of us as Christians is to counter-act that cunning darkness in all we do.
It’s what Jesus is talking about in this morning’s Gospel. We’re the foot soldiers of God in this world. We know the task…we’re to give to those in need, we’re to lift up the downtrodden, help mend the broken hearted, stand up and speak out against injustice. We’re to overcome the forces of darkness with the light of love. We are to do this. Constantly.
Why?
Because the forces of darkness in this world are relentless. They’re constantly re-inventing themselves, they’re cunning, baffling, and powerful. And it’s up to us to defeat them.
What propelled my friend Ian to take his own life three years ago this week? Despair.
What causes madmen to enter schools, churches and nightclubs to kill at will? Cunning Evil.
What pushes a suicide bomber into such a warped sense of faith that they think blowing up themselves and countless others is the work of God? A baffling mis-interpretation of God fueled by the Evil One.
There are forces at work in our world that need to be pushed back. They need to be challenged. They need to be defeated. And that happens through us. With every act of love that we do, darkness takes a body blow. With every act of charity, evil takes a hit, with every act of justice, hatred loses more of its grip.
And the more evil, darkness, hate and despair are pushed back, the closer we are to seeing the Kingdom of God in this world.
But, we still have the nagging issue of Abraham and Isaac.
How could God ask Abraham to kill Isaac?
The clear and certain answer is this: God didn’t.
And as Abraham was binding Isaac, as he lay him on the pile of wood, as he prepared to plunge that knife into him, God was screaming, God was begging, God was pleading with Abraham to stop. For God knew that the voice Abraham heard was not Divine at all.
It was the cunning voice of darkness, the same voice of darkness that propels terrorists, murderers, rapists and yes even my friend Ian. For the forces of darkness in this world are indeed cunning and baffling and can only, will only be forever silenced, through Love. Our love. Given to one another fully and thoroughly. No exceptions.
So.. maybe I did preach the Gospel after all. There is Evil and there is Goodness. There is Hate and there is Love.
And by living our lives as Jesus taught us to live them, Goodness will prevail, Love will reign and God? God will find it good…very very good.
Amen.
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