Sermon from Sunday, August 10, 2014

Scripture:  Matthew 14:22-33
Sermon:  Everything I need to know about discipleship I learned in fifty feet of water

Everything I need to know about being a disciple I learned in fifty feet of water.  Well, maybe not everything; but three things at least.

 

One is that human beings are not meant to walk on water – not created for it, not called by God to do it.  Seems like a no-brainer, but you know me.  I know now it was my ego, but at the time I thought it was all about Jesus.  I thought, “With Jesus, anything is possible.  If he is God, everything is possible.”  I see now you have to be careful what you mean by “anything” and “everything” and how you interpret “possible.”  And maybe even what kind of “God” you have in mind.

 

We were out on the lake in a storm with the wind against us, and we were not too confident.  We were still reeling from the execution of John the Baptist in prison by King Herod.  We weren’t surprised he was in jail; his and Jesus’ message about the kingdom of God put them at odds with the government and the dominant culture of our time.  But when Herod so easily disposed of him it shook us that John’s being a prophet of God and speaking God’s truth about the king in the end didn’t give him any protection.

 

After that the feeding of the thousands momentarily bolstered our belief in the real coming of the kingdom of God.  But now we were out on the sea again – that place of primordial chaos, and we were alone.  Jesus put us in a boat, told us to meet him on the other side where there would be more people to reach with the kingdom of God, and then he disappeared.  

 

Didn’t he know the sailing would be rough, and that against the currents and trends and tides of the world we’d be getting nowhere?  The boat on the sea has always been our symbol of the church in the world, and no matter how hard we rowed and how hard we tried to find a favourable wind we seemed to be getting nowhere, blown off course, maybe even going backward.

 

So when we saw Jesus coming to us across the water we imagined the worst.  They must have got him, too.  They must have killed and silenced Jesus, just like John and just like the world always seems to silence the real prophets, and this was his ghost coming to haunt us.

 

But “Take heart,” he said, in the way he always did.  “It is I,” like Yahweh saying to Moses, “I am that I am” – that holy affirmation of sacred being-with-us.  And “do not be afraid” – the one thing that angels and messengers and Sons of God always say to us to put us at ease.

 

The others in the boat believed when they heard that, and accepted the mystery and grace of his coming to us in the storm.  They waited for him to come and join us in the boat.

 

But me?  Oh, no.  

 

“If you are the Son of God,” I said, “command me to come to you on the water.”  I had to make Jesus prove himself in some special way for my benefit.  And I had to be the one, didn’t I, to be different and special; who could go beyond limits and boundaries; who could go that one step beyond everyone else; who could be just like Jesus – at least like I imagined him.  Only now do I see the devil’s hand in it, like in the temptations Jesus faced in the desert:  “If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread … if you are the Son of God, why don’t you claim all power and authority … if you are the Son of God, leap from the top of the temple and God will send angels to protect you from harm.”

 

Jesus humoured me, though, and let me learn the only way I know how – by failing and falling.  I felt so close to him and was so totally focused on him that I really did walk a few steps.  But who was I fooling?  How could I imagine I could do it by myself apart from the others, and why did I imagine that was actually what Jesus wanted me to do?

 

Which brings me to the second thing I learned: boats are good, and that’s why Jesus sends us out in them.  In the boat, for one thing, we disciples are together – listening to one another, supporting and correcting one another in what we feel and believe and think we know, helping one another to see Jesus and God more clearly, seeing and hearing Jesus and God in one another.  The idea of “just-me-and-Jesus” walking on water together is tempting to people like me; far better though is the reality of being with the others in the boat, rowing together in the direction Jesus sets for us.

 

Because the boat does get us through.  As leaky and slow and cumbersome and sometimes too big and sometimes too small it may be, from the Ark of ancient times to the church of tomorrow, the boat is how we get from A to Z, how we find the courage to venture out from safe harbour where we’re really of no use to anyone out there in the world, and how we get to the other side and to the new groups of people Jesus wants to reach out to with us.

 

And even when it is slow going and we seem to be getting nowhere, Jesus is patient with us.  He knows how hard it is sometimes to make headway, whether it’s the tide and trends of the world against us that slows us down, or our own slowness and stubbornness to go in the direction he wants.  Either way, when he was coming to us on the water it was not to scold us for not being further along.  It was to join us wherever we were and to be with us for the rest of the journey.

 

Which is the third thing I think we all learned: that Jesus is always ready to save us wherever we are, rescue us from whatever predicament we are in, and help us find a place in the boat – help us find ourselves among whatever people and in whatever community of belief we need for our own healing and wholeness.  No matter how foolish or sinful or proud any of us – or anyone else, might be at times, there’s a place in the boat for us all and for anyone else who might come along, because that’s just how Jesus is.  It’s how God is.  

 

Neither Jesus nor God want anyone to be out there – either on the sea or another shore, all by themselves.  And if we really believe in Jesus as the Son of God, we’ll use the boat we have to leave the safe harbour behind and go out on the sea like Jesus wants us to, to reach anyone or any group of people who need to know about God’s love and God’s kingdom at work in the world and in their lives.

 

And that’s not the devil talking this time; that’s me and what I learned in fifty feet of water about being a disciple of Jesus.

Toward Sunday, August 10, 2014

Scripture:  Matthew 14:22-33 (Walking on Water)
Sermon:  Wanted: disciples -- no walking on water required

When someone tells me "you can't walk on water unless you get out of the boat," I assume they mean well.  I'm sure they intend only to draw me out of my comfort zone into something that will be challenging, but good for me (as long as I keep my eyes on Jesus).

I wonder, though.  Is that what this story really says?  Or have they missed the point?

Reading the story ... Jesus tells the disciples (us) to take the boat (from the earliest times, a symbol of the church or the community of faith) across the sea (a place of chaotic possibilities and anxiety), to join him on the other side (in new territory) in preaching and teaching the kingdom of God to whoever is there (our reason for being).  The going is hard and slow (when isn't that the case with the church?), but even at that there is no suggestion that Jesus ever asks the disciples to abandon ship.  He knows how hard the going is, and he is patient with the progress his disciples are making.

The idea to jump ship and walk on the water comes only from Peter, who tries to bolster his brittle faith in Jesus by asking for a spectacular sign to prove who he is (reminiscent of the famous, "If you are the Son of God..." temptations that the devil throws at Jesus in Matthew 4:1-11).  Jesus humours Peter, invites him out for a water-walk, and then simultaneously rescues him from, and chides him for his little faith and his need for miracles and spectacles.  Then he quietly helps Peter find his place in the boat again with the others (whose faith seems somehow more secure).

One thing, though, lest we conclude that the story is about "staying safe."  The boat is out on the sea on a mission from Jesus.  As hard and slow as the going is, the disciples are steering the boat across the sea of change towards a new and other shore, and to people who Jesus wants to reach with the good news of the kingdom of God.

So as much as we really are not meant (or asked by God) to walk on water, neither is the boat we are in meant to stay quietly anchored in safe haven.  We find security and salvation in the boat, but maybe only as we keep steering and rowing to whatever new place Jesus is wanting to go to with us.

On Sunday we 'll think more about these things, as we worship the God who calls us into the boat and onto the sea.

Sermon from Sunday, August 3, 2014

Scripture:  Matthew 14:13-21

How does it happen? 

 

Jesus and his followers have only 5 loaves and 2 fish to offer, and by the time 5000 men and who knows how many women and children have had their fill there is food left over – 12  baskets full – a basket still full for each of the 12 tribes of God’s people.  How is it that everyone around them is fed and all of God’s people still have more to share?  It’s the kingdom of God come-alive in the world, and it’s good to wonder how it happens.  

 

This week I came across a few answers.

 

 

Maybe the disciples ordered pizza – a tradition maintained to this day by youth groups across the country, making pizza a sacrament of the kingdom as good as bread and wine, and reinforcing the way we sometimes assume we need to order something in – that in ourselves we don’t have what it takes to meet the needs of others around us.

Or maybe there was something extraordinary about the loaves and the fish that were available that day.

 

Sometimes we think if only we had better gifts, bigger resources of some kind then maybe we could be of more use, offer something worthwhile to the world and to people around us.

 

Or there’s also this suggestion of super-natural help from above:

 

We believe in prayer and sometimes it seems all we can do is pray for God and the angels somehow to intervene – to do something miraculous or magical to meet the need – somehow to change things or change people or change the world for the better.

 

And there are elements of truth in all of these answers.  There are resources we can order or bring in from outside to add to what we have already, to make ourselves stronger and more faithful as a congregation.  There are also sometimes extraordinary gifts and resources that land in our lap that allow us to do extraordinary things.  And there is power in intercessory prayer, and an effect that heaven has on earth.

 

But none of these things are mentioned in the story.  When it comes to feeding the crowd around the disciples – when it comes to meeting the needs of others around us, three things happen that make this a story of the kingdom of God coming-to-be in the life of the world.

 

One is that when the need becomes apparent – when it’s obvious there’s a hunger and something needs to be done to meet it, Jesus asks his disciples – asks us, “What do you have?  They need not go away or elsewhere; you can give them something to eat.  What do you have?”

 

 

Five loaves and two fish.  Ordinary bread, common fish.  The kind of ordinary stuff everyone has every day of their lives.  “Nothing but these things,” the disciples say – meaning “only” this.  Except Jesus doesn’t see it as “only.”  Jesus sees it as exactly what’s needed, and as enough.

In response to the needs of the world around us – as close as next door and in our own city, or around the world, what do we have?  What is it we carry with us?  What is it we have within us?

Some of us find this easy to answer.  For Jesus it is easy and immediate.  At the very start of the story, when Jesus sees the great crowd that has gathered around him, he has compassion on them, and because he knows it he lets it guide his actions and his response.  

Some of us are as aware as he is of what we carry and feel inside; our feelings rise easily and we know them by name.  Others of us find it harder; we bury what we feel – for a variety of reasons, and we need to learn to scratch the surface a bit, dig a little into ourselves to really know what we feel and le to express it.  But regardless of who and how we are, we have feelings, thoughts and ideas in response to the needs of others.  It’s the way God has made us – to be capable of sympathy with someone else’s sorrow; capable of tears in the face of another’s pain and loss; of anger against ignorance, abuse or hurt; of both fear and anger  when we see someone’s well-being in peril; of shared joy with someone else’s happiness.

So “what do you have, what’s really deep-down inside you when you see the needs of the world, when you see the hunger of others?”  Jesus asks us to take the time to know what it is – to name and identify what is stirred up within us by what we see and hear around us.

Then, “bring it to me,” Jesus says. 

This is the second thing, and it’s important because a lot of what we feel and think in response to what we see in the world and in others’ lives is often not in and of itself the answer – not what will help the kingdom of God to come.

For Jesus it is easier.  As like us as he is in his humanity, he is also more open to the mind and heart of God than we are, more in tune with the spirit and vision of God.  So when he responds from his heart, it is a holy, healing and life-giving response.  It’s redemptive.

We are more mixed in how we feel and respond – there’s a little more of self and selfishness, a greater longing for quick and simple answers that will make things easier for us, a quicker tendency to judge and close the book than Jesus shows.

So Jesus says “bring it to me,” and he lifts what we have to God.  He connects what we feel and think to the mind and heart of God, to God’s truth and good will.  And in this way, what we feel and think is refined, purified, sanctified, maybe changed or enlarged.  The rough and selfish edges are knocked off.  Maybe one way to think about it is that the dirt and mold of our humanness is scraped off the bread of our feelings, and the bones of self-centredness are taken out of the fish of our thoughts and ideas.

And then, thus purified and blessed, he tells us to give and offer what we have to the crowd – bearing in mind what we have heard him say previous to this: that what we have to give may seem as tiny and insignificant as a mustard seed, and it may seem to disappear into the life of the world like a little bit of yeast in a big lump of dough.

But that’s the good news – that sometimes from our little mustard seed there grows exactly the plant that others need for refuge and life; that just a little yeast that we add into the mix gives rise to a lot of new life; and that just a few loaves and fishes – ordinary loaves and common fish – the ordinary stuff we all have within us every day of our lives, is exactly what’s needed and is enough, when we bring it to Jesus and let him guide us in offering it.

Towards Sunday, August 3, 2014

Scripture:  Matthew 14:13-21 (Feeding Five Thousand)
Sermon: Do communities of faith still have what the world is hungry for?

The world is hungry ... for hope, real leadership, vision, healing, forgiveness, more faithful care of Earth, justice, civility, compassionate community, a better way of life.  When we had Christendom as our context, we could count on partners in high places to help meet the need to shape a good world.

But now that we no longer have the ear of government in the same way, nor the same level of support from business and civic leaders in seeking the kingdom of God in our time, this Gospel story takes on new and powerful meaning.  This is a story for the church today to listen to, with newly opened ears.

The needs we face are huge, whether we look globally or locally, publicly or privately.  What's needed is people and communities of faith ready to offer what they have -- even all by themselves, in the faith that the little we are able to do and offer is still all it takes for good things to happen.

The worst that could happen would be a continuation and fulfilment of W.B. Yeats' dreadful vision after the Great War of 1914-1918:

     ... The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

Sermon for Sunday, July 27, 2014

Scripture:  Matthew 13:31-33, 44-53
Sermon:  You Never Know

Some years ago at a wedding I officiated at, the couple chose a poem by Marge Piercy as the reading for their ceremony.  It’s titled, “Why Marry At All?” and it begins this way: 

          Why mar what has grown up between the cracks

          And flourished, like a weed

          That discovers itself to bear rugged

          Spikes of magenta blossom in August,

          Ironweed sturdy and bold,

          A perennial that endures winters to persist? 

          Why register with the State?

          Why enlist in the legions of the respectable?

          Why risk the whole apparatus of roles

          And rules, of laws and liabilities?

          Why licence our bed at the foot

          Like our Datsun truck: will the mileage improve? 

The poem works its way through to a positive and hope-filled understanding of marriage as a good institution, but at the same time it never lets go of the understanding of real love as being like a weed that grows up through the cracks unexpected and unexpectedly wonderful. 

Jesus says that’s what the kingdom of God is like in the world; it’s how he sees it coming: 

It’s like a mustard seed, he says – the smallest of seeds, and a weed at that, but as it grows, that which the world sees of no worth, turns out to be just what all the world needs. 

It’s like yeast – which in Jesus’ tradition was seen as unclean and unholy, but which when mixed in with good flour gives rise to new life that keeps us and others alive. 

It’s like a treasure hidden in a field that you just stumble across by accident; you can’t claim it as your own, but it’s so valuable that you give up all that is yours, just to have it and not let it go.

It’s like a one-in-a-million pearl that falls into your lap and makes everything else you have seem suddenly junky and disposable, so you give and  give up all you have for it. 

And it’s how others see it still.  The kingdom of God still comes into the world like a weed growing up through the cracks. 

Rev. Thom Shuman, an interim minister in the Presbyterian Church in Ohio, puts it this way in a meditation he wrote for this week’s gospel: 

the kingdom of heaven

is like a community organizer

walking through

oppression's neatly ordered regulations,

          planting seeds which blossom into radical hope;

the kingdom of heaven

         is like mold on a slice of bread

                   which can cure a child's infection; 

 

the kingdom of heaven

          is like the young family

which buys

a foreclosed house in a rough neighborhood

and turns it into a day care center. 

My guess is that he mentions what he does because these are things he has seen first-hand – that even as he works in the institution of the church, keeping things going with programs and plans and projects with predictable outcomes, he knows that what really makes a difference in the life of the church and the world are the new ideas that start no bigger than a mustard seed, the only-half-thought-through project that at first seems like a waste of time at a Council meeting, the surprising opportunity that lands in our laps from out of the blue and that calls us to rethink everything we thought we were doing and investing in. 

I wonder in what other ways the kingdom of heaven comes into the world like a weed growing up through the cracks, unexpectedly and unexpectedly wonderful. 

What now is World Vision began 54 years ago as a few file folders, a phone and mail list of potential donors, a money bag and a receipt book in the desk drawer of one man who just wanted to help a few poor people in one country. 

Marshall Memorial’s two- and three-times a year mission trips of 15-20 people at a time began with a wrong turn by a Hamilton businessman on a business trip to trip the Dominican, that took him unexpectedly into the island’s poorest ghettoes. 

CityKidz began – as we now know by heart, with one skinny, slightly out-of-place young man just out of theology school, a soccer ball, and no plan other than a desire to make a difference for good in the lives of a handful of kids. 

And lest we think it happens only in other places and with other people, I wonder in whose kitchen in Winona in 1967 a few people started tossing around the as-yet-undone idea of maybe organizing some kind of peach festival to celebrate the community spirit and maybe raise a little money for community activities? 

Or, more recently, who would have thought that a boxful of knitted quilts and blankets, stored away for a few years in a cupboard and mostly forgotten, would be just what was needed to help complete a visiting speaker’s mission trip to Peru? 

We never really know, do we?   

At our best, Jesus says, our life is like a net thrown into the sea that draws in all kinds of fish – all kinds of ideas, people, experience, plans and projects.  And by ourselves we can’t really sort out good from bad, useful from useless.  How are we really to know?  We can only pray that God and God’s angels will help us work it out – help us see in some little way

·         what tiny little seed of an idea is God’s plan and God’s planting in our life

·         what weedy little project is meant to become the centrepiece of our future

·         what yeast is at work within us, giving rise to new life

·         what surface we should scratch to find the treasure underneath

·         what one-in-a-million pearl might be in our hand already, just waiting for us to give up everything else we have so we can give our whole attention to it.

Jesus says the kingdom of heaven comes into the world over and over and over again.  And we pray, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done …”

Towards Sunday, July 27, 2014

Scripture:  Matthew 13:31-33, 44-53
Sermon:  Weeds in the Cracks of the Sidewalk

This week we read a bunch of little parables that pack a big punch.  The mustard seed and leaven are two very little unclean things that end up having have a big and wonderful effect; the buried treasure and pearl of great price are two unexpected little finds that end up being more valuable to the finder than everything else they thought they were looking for.

And that, Jesus says, is what the kingdom of God is like and how it appears in our life.

Is there some little thing that maybe nobody else sees as good, that has drawn you towards God and helped shape or save your faith?  Has there been a completely unplanned and unexpected little gift that has turned out to be the most valuable part of your spiritual journey?

Sermon: Sunday, July 20, 2014

Scripture:  Matthew 13:24-30
Sermon:  Not Rushing to Judgement

When Jesus says God’s kingdom is like a field of good wheat into which an enemy sows weeds, he’s not telling us anything we don’t already know.

 

A generation ago typical Sunday worship across the country in United Church congregations would have opened with a prayer like this – maybe even this prayer exactly, from the old Green Service Book: 

Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against thy holy laws, we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us.

In other words: 

Almighty and most merciful God, as much as we are part of your sowing of good wheat in the world, both you and we know that we still act and look a lot lke weeds. 

The question is not whether we are wheat and weeds together.  The question is what to do about it.

 

Which is why from time to time we get serious about doing some weeding.  It’s a natural response – especially in a culture like ours that puts so much stock in self-help, self-improvement, home renovation and personal make-over.  In our souls and in our homes, in our church and in our community, with self-help books and programs in hand, spiritual practices and physical disciplines, selective activities and relationships to focus on, and a whole range of living and lifestyle choices, we try to weed out of our lives and out of our world what (and even sometimes who) is bad and ungodly, so what is good and godly can stand out and flourish.  

 

Except Jesus says it’s not that simple.  We’re mistaken, he says, in our confidence that we can really get a handle on the weeds and clean the field up.  And we do real damage, he says, to God’s whole harvest, when we get too aggressive in weeding out what and who we think doesn’t belong.

 

Because the weeds he’s concerned about are not just any old weeds.  They are tares.  That’s what they’re called in the older translations of this parable, and tares – also called darnel, are a very special and very nasty kind of weed.

 

For one thing they are quite toxic.  Mixed in with wheat, they can ruin a whole harvest – make it bitter and unpalatable.  No farmer would ever want tares to be growing in his field.  But which of us has not known some Christians and some churches to be just like that?  

 

Some years ago I filled in for a minister for one week in the summer at a church in the city and it was one of the worst – one of the most depressing experiences of worship I can remember.  I felt like I was in a big barn of a sanctuary with what seemed to be only a few handfuls of people scattered around it.  But it wasn’t the size of the place and the smallness of the number that struck me.  Nor was it we were doing anything wrong.  We were doing, saying singing all the right stuff.  But there was a spirit of discouragement and tiredness, of closedness and judgement that seemed to fill the place – that seemed to be there like weeds poking up their heads between the good words we were saying and the good songs we were singing.   It was like toxic tares in the midst of the wheat.  It left a bitter taste in my mouth.  I was glad not to have been asked to do a second week.

 

All of us have probably also known individual Christians like that  – people who on one level do things right and all the right things, but in whom there’s also something not so right at work – maybe cynicism or anger, or judgement and self-righteousness, or pride and a kind of know-it-all-ness that just makes you not want to be with them a lot, not want to work with them or be part of the same group as them.  Sometimes in the midst of all the good we do, there’s also something toxic, Jesus says.

 

It can be hard to deal with because a second thing about tares is they actually look a lot like wheat.  They’re so similar to wheat in appearance that most times you can’t really separate the two or tell what’s good and what’s bad with any real precision.  

 

It makes me think of how our greatest gifts at times can become our greatest weakness.  How we may have the best of intentions, but we’re blind to our hidden motivations.  How our actions may be perfectly good on one level – usually in the short-term, and turn out not so good on another, usually more long-term.

 

Even Jesus, when someone calls him Good Teacher, says, “Why do you call me good?  Only God is good.”  Was maybe even he aware that sometimes he rubbed people the wrong way?  That he sometimes gave offence in ways he didn’t intend?  That being human he had his own mixture of good and bad to deal with?  That it’s impossible to live in this world without being involved somehow in its sin?  

 

Which leads to a third thing about tares – that they have roots that go deep and become so entangled with those of the wheat, that if you try to pull out a handful of tares you’ll also be pulling out good wheat with it.  Try ridding the field of tares, try un-mixing the field, and you’ll end up with nothing at all – no tares, no wheat and no harvest.

 

I like the way Pam Laing, a minister of the United Presbyterian Church in the States, puts it in a sermon she writes about this parable: 

Sadly, God's friends are also God's worst enemies! … The Pharisees who had Jesus killed are perfect examples of this.  They were seeking to be good weeders on God's behalf, and wound up killing the very God they sought to serve.   

Jesus, on the other hand, worked with the weeds in his midst.  He did not weed out Judas from the twelve disciples, even though he knew Judas would betray him.  Jesus did not weed out Peter even when he knew that Peter would deny him.  In fact, Jesus knew that all twelve of his disciples would run away when he needed them most, but he still did not remove them from the fellowship.  Let's face it; if Jesus had weeded out all the imperfect people around him, he would have been standing alone!

It seems we’re all in this together, or we’re not really in it at all.  The way Jesus sees it, tares are simply a fact of life in God’s field of wheat and God is able and willing to work with it.

 

So maybe the best we can do is not be as sure as we sometimes are of our blamelessness and goodness, give other people a little more leeway of grace and openness in the ways we judge and treat them, and every time we gather for worship do as people have done for millennia by offering the fullness – both the good and the bad of who we are in a prayer like the one we used to say from the old Green Service Book: 

Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against thy holy laws, we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us. 

But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us.  Spare thou, them, O God, who confess their faults.  Restore thou them that are penitent, according to thy promises declared unto humankind in Christ Jesus our Lord.  And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to the glory of thy holy Name.  Amen. 

The language is old and a bit hard to understand.  So how can we express this prayer in meaningful ways today?  And when we do, does it lead us a little more deeply into the fullness and the mystery of God’s kingdom?