The Roots of our Faith Take Hold Proper 12a 2020

+The Parable of the Mustard Seed gives us hope that even if our faith is TINY, it’s enough...no heavy lifting,  our wavering puny faith can carry the day. 

Ok,  so it is true that with even a morsel of faith, God CAN do marvelous things.But don’t forget that the mustard plant was a huge threat to farmers, for from that tiny seed grew an invasive weed, transforming the carefully planted fields of a 1st century farmer into a morass of weed. 

The mustard seed, once released cannot be easily tamed. 

Which is exactly Jesus’ point.

    The kingdom Jesus proclaims is something that, once sprouted in a community, takes over, upsets and transforms. The kingdom Jesus speaks of comes to upset the very fabric of this world, the very kingdoms that rule our daily lives. The kingdoms of us vs. them, the kingdoms of science be dammed, the kingdoms of hate unleashed upon the those who don’t look like us, pray like us love like us or vote like us. Kingdoms where love of self outweighs love of neighbor.  

   The good news is that those of us gathered across the Zoom-a-verse believe in and can imagine something greater than those Human-made kingdoms. We can imagine a world where the humble are exalted, the hungry fed, the naked clothed, the illiterate read, the unemployed work , the fearful, encouraged, the lonely embraced and the lost found. A world where a black man can be pulled over for a traffic stop and live to tell about it. A world where I wear a mask to protect you and you wear one to protect me, a world that leaves no one behind. 

I know that we’re people who understand that the mustard seed faith Jesus speaks of has its roots in hope. I also know that this hope isn’t just platitudes. I know that the hope found in faith prods and pokes us into taking action. Because once that seed sprouts and those roots take hold, our faith, just like the mustard plant, spreads like crazy.

    Once the roots of our faith take hold, this faith of ours stops being a noun and starts being a verb.

Which is just what God intends. 

Like a planted seed needs sunlight and water to root and grow, God takes the initiative—-plants the seed—-but it’s our nurturing response that brings those  Divine Dreams to life. And once those dreams are realized, more dreams sprout, grow, and spread. 

     God has a vision and through God’s call and our response, amazing things happen: a mustard seed grows into an immense plant, a shepherd boy is chosen as king, and a small child from Nazareth grows into the Christ. (Bruce Epperly)

      By virtue of our baptisms we are called to work on behalf of God to topple the world of intolerance, fear and violence. You and me. Regular folk with at times unremarkable faith are called to this work.

Listen closely and we'’ll hear God’s cries in the lament of people of color, pinned under the foot of the oppressor; listen closely and we’ll hear God’s cries in the exhausted medical personnel, grieving family members and desperate patients begging us to wear our masks, wash our hands and stay home, listen closely and we’ll hear God’s cries in the children with nothing to eat, nowhere safe to play and schools too overburdened to give them quality education.

 Listen and hear the cries of God's people and then get to work. 

     With the Holy Spirit interceding for us with those glorious and sacred sighs, we can, even with faith the size of a mustard seed,  get this world moving in the direction of Love. 

And when we do that, the Kingdom of Heaven will indeed sprout and spread  all around us. Amen. +

Sometimes We're Wheat, Sometimes We're Weeds Proper 11 Yr A St James, Titusville Holloway Chapel, Holloway by the Bay Canada

+Some days we're wheat, some days we're weeds.

Today our Gospel is the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds.

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. It doesn’t gibe with how I experience God. This parable definitely requires some turning of the soil...for only in digging can we reach the richness of the dark and fertile soil that makes up this story.

     Jesus seems to be saying that we are divided into two camps—the good and the evil. The in and the out. The wheat and the weed. But it’s not 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 and are both. Some days our garden is full of weeds, other days, the flowers—-the wheat—-rules. 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 an inside job making us unwilling to love neighbor as self, unwilling to work for justice for all forever. 

Working to live into the fullness of God means that 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 let the darkness of doubt, the uneasiness of disbelief and the decay of despair rule. This is the stuff of weeds, the stuff of Not-God—-blocking us from the fullness of God.

    Sometimes we’re wheat…and sometimes we’re weeds. Sometimes we do the work of God—-feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, speaking out against hate and sowing love…and sometimes the work of the evil one wins and we serve ourselves instead of our neighbor, passing by the lost, dismissing the downtrodden, failing to respect the dignity of every human being, regardless of the color of their skin, the creed they follow or the political party they support.

     Do not fear, for when the weeds are everywhere, when our choices lead us astray, 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. +