Resentment

A magician worked on a cruise ship and because he had a different audience each week he could get away with doing the same tricks over and over and over.  There was one problem, however.  The ship’s captain owned a parrot and the parrot always watched the shows.  Eventually it figured out how the magician did all his tricks and during performances began to squawk out things like “Look, it’s not the same hat!”, “He’s hiding the flowers under the table”, and “the entire deck is made up of the ace of spades.”  Well, as you can imagine the magician was furious, but because the parrot belonged to the captain there was nothing he could do.  Then one day the ship hit an iceberg and sank.  As fate would have it, the magician and parrot found themselves alone together drifting on a piece of wood.  They stared at each other with hatred but did not utter a word.  This went on for an entire day and then another and then another.  On the fourth day adrift, the parrot broke down and said, “OK, I give up.  What did you do with the ship?”

There is little we enjoy more than seeing a know-it-all, self-promoting, glory-hogging, show-boating so-and-so get taken down a peg or two.  There is nothing quite as satisfying as witnessing the downfall of those who think they are better than the rest of us.  There is something deliciously tasty about the governor’s trial going on in Richmond.  Who doesn’t want to peak behind the ‘Ken and Barbie curtain’ in order to see the mess that was couple’s real life?  Most Cleveland Browns fans are praying that Johnny Manziel (their rookie quarterback) will be able to walk on water while the rest of the world will be tuning in in hopes that he sinks like a stone in some glorious fashion.

If you understand this sentiment than you have tapped into a dynamic woven into two of today’s readings from Scripture. 

First, there is Joseph, the youngest of twelve brothers and his father’s favorite.  He enjoys snitching on his siblings, telling them about dreams he has where they bow down to him, and parading around in a special coat his dad made for him.  By the time he tracks them to field where they are tending to the flock, the brothers have had enough of Joseph’s act.  At first they plan to kill him, but eventually decide to sell him to a caravan of traders.  If you put yourself in their shoes you would believe that Joseph got what was coming to him.

And then there is Peter, the rock on whom Jesus will build his church.  The twelve disciples are in a boat, struggling all night to make headway in a storm.  As morning approaches they look out over the water and see a ghost walking toward them.  They are terrified.  The figure shouts out to them, “It is me, Jesus.”  That is when Peter pushes himself once again into the limelight and says, “Lord, if it is you, command me to walk on the water with you.”  He steps out of the boat and onto the water, walking toward Jesus.  Only when he looks down and sees what he is doing does he begin to sink.  You have to think that the eleven disciples back in the boat were chuckling under their breath as they whispered to one another, “Who does he think he is?”

I suspect that when you boil it all down, the same emotion is driving both Joseph’s brothers and the eleven disciples: the emotion of resentment.  While guilt is anger directed at oneself, resentment is anger directed at another for something either they did or did not do.  Both groups resented the special treatment received by one of their members.  The brothers resented Joseph for lording it over them.  I suspect that the disciples resented Peter for taking center stage. 

Some resentments are justified, like when we are offended by a governor and his wife who misuse an elected position to feather their own nest.  Other resentments are not worth the time, like when we are upset by all the attention given to a star athlete who has yet to prove himself.  But all resentments are more destructive to the person who holds them than they are to person who inspires them.  Friedrich Nietzche said that nothing on earth consumes a person more quickly than the passion of resentment.  Alcoholics’ Anonymous teaches that holding on to resentment in order to hurt another person is like drinking poison in hopes that person will die.

Here is something we should recognize about Joseph’s brothers and the eleven disciples: ultimately, what they resent is the ‘success’ of another.  Joseph did not ask to be the favorite son.  That was his father’s decision.  He did not ask to rule over his brothers one day.  That will be God’s decision.  Peter did not ask to lead the church.  That was Jesus’ decision.  He was not showing off when he went out of the water, he just wanted to be close to his Lord. 

Do you know who Dave Winer is?  He has been called one of the 25 most influential people on the web and one of the 10 inventories of internet technology no one has heard of.   Winer developed RSS, which stands for “Real Simple Syndication”, the software behind blogging, podcasting, and much of today’s content distribution.   Back in the day he was a simple programmer doing mindless work as just one more interchangeable part of a long line of people writing code.  But he was able to see something in the web’s potential that others could not.  He wanted to open up its potential to everyone by freeing it from the control of billion dollar business like IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle.  He quit his job, formed his own software company, and then developed RSS.   Do you know what Dave Winer says should be written on his gravestone?  “Who does he think he is?”  He writes on his blog that you cannot begin to imagine the demeaning and condescending things people have said to him or about him on account of his success.  Resentment runs deep in his critics. 

I am convinced that each of us is born with a distinctive temperament and set of gifts that are God given.  Through baptism I believe we acknowledge the power of the Holy Spirit to activate these gifts for service in God’s kingdom for the welfare and benefit of all.  Each of us has a job to do.  Each of us has a role to play.  We don’t measure ourselves against others, rather we evaluate ourselves based on how God has equipped us and on what God has called us to do.  Think about Jesus’ parable of the talents.  What the person given five talents was able to do was not compared to the achievements of the person given ten.  The person with five talents was judged based on faithfulness, not volume or outcome.   So, if this is true (and I think it is), there is no place for resentment of the success of another.

After graduating from seminary I served as an assistant to two different rectors.  Let me just say that they were very different people.  One was threatened by the things I did well.  He became uneasy if I did something that earned the praise of others.  I have known narcissistic priests where everything had to be about them, but this person was not like that.  He was more neurotic where everything that happened around him caused him to question his own worth and value.  In that environment I found it very difficult to discover, develop, and use my gifts.  The other priest I served delighted in the gifts and achievements of his staff.  When one of us shined bright he beamed.  I have always appreciated his witness and way and have tried to emulate it as best I can. 

We are here, each one of us, to build up, not to tear down.  I love the imagery of the proper preface in the Eucharistic prayer that says, “through Jesus Christ…, in whom we are built up as living stones of a holy temple.”  It suggests that we each have a place and a part.  It says that each of our places and parts is determined by Jesus.  And it hints that we may need help from others to figure out exactly where that place is and exactly what that part is to be. 

Let me leave you with this quote from Henri Nouwen:

Did I offer peace today?  Did I bring a smile to someone’s face?  Did I say words of healing?  Did I let go of my anger and resentment?  Did I forgive?  Did I love?  These are the real questions.  I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.

Communion Happens

Well, it’s good to be home after a week’s vacation.  Did that sound like I meant it?  I had a wonderful time driving a black Cameo convertible around the Pacific Northwest.  I saw breath-taking sites, ate wonderful food, met interesting people, and (thanks to booking with Travelocity) stayed in some sketchy hotel accommodations.  I also had a lot of time to read – something I enjoy doing when I am on vacation. 

On the flight home I finished a book titled After Visiting Friends.  It was written by Michael Hainey, a deputy editor for GQ magazine who is in his early 40’s.  The book chronicles his attempt to discover the circumstances of his father’s death, which happened when Hainey was just a boy.  A wonderful writer, he uses words to paint vivid portraits of his family members as well as the people he meets in attempt to uncover the truth.  Perhaps my favorite description was a of a records bureaucrat who moved with the speed of football linebacker walking off the field after an overtime loss.

Hainey’s mother is a stoic type whose life has become very drab and regimented.  She keeps her emotions to herself, never says I love you, and whenever her son comes to visit gives him only a brief, half-hearted, one-armed embrace.  Toward the end of the book, Hainey’s grandmother (his mother’s mother) passes away.  He was very close to her throughout his life, but even the death of her mother seems not to faze his mother.

But as Mike is driving her and his girlfriend, Brooke, from the cemetery after the burial, his mother does something that, to my reading, is completely out of character.  They notice a herd of twenty-to-thirty deer grazing in a corner of the cemetery and Hainey pulls over the car.  Its occupants silently watch the creatures as they eat. 

Let me read for you the passage from After Visiting Friends:

Then mom says, “Where’s the Ritz?”

She’d packed snacks – Ritz crackers, a tin of Planters, bottles of water.  “It’s going to be a long day,” she said in the morning, before we left the house for the funeral home.  “It’s good to have something to keep your energy up.”

From the back seat, Brooke hands her a sleeve of crackers sealed in brown wax paper.

My mother opens the door and the next thing I know, she’s walking into the field.

She clutches the crackers in her outstretched arm, like she’s a missionary holding her crucifix aloft, approaching the weary natives on the riverbank, her birch-bark canoe put ashore behind her.  The deer go on eating.  My mother walks toward a large buck in the center of the herd, his head crowned with a broad rack of antlers.  He lifts his head and considers her.  My mother stands less than an antler’s worth away.  My mother looks at him and then opens her tube of crackers and places one in her palm.  The buck shifts toward her, lowers his head, and slowly, gently, nuzzles the cracker from my mother’s hand.  He chews it, orangey flakes falling from his wet black lips.  My mother reaches out and touches the thick of his neck.  The buck is motionless as she strokes him softly.  And then my mother offers up to him another cracker and once again he eats it from her palm.  My mother looks back toward us, a smile on her face.

Brooke says, “I think you better go help your mother.”

I go to my mother like a man navigating a minefield.  I don’t want to spook them.

By the time I get to my mother the deer have formed a soft circle around her.  But they’re polite.  Standing there, waiting patiently for a Ritz.  My mother beams.

“Take some, Mike,” and she gives me a fistful.

I start to hand out the crackers.  Wet tongues snatch them from my hand. 

Hainey describes a magical moment initiated by the least likely person in the book to engage in something like this.  His mother, after all, is the person who goes down to the basement every day to make sure the sump-pump is still working.  What she says next caught me completely off-guard and is the reason I wanted to share this passage with you:

When we’re out of crackers, my mother says to the deer, “Sorry, guys.  Holy Communion is over.”

From her wax paper sleeve she shakes the crumbs into her palm, scatters the remains over the meadows.

There is more than a little of today’s gospel reading in that story, isn’t there.  The gospel begins with Jesus getting into a boat and setting off for a deserted place so that he can be by himself.  It is no wonder that he wants to be alone.  In the verses just before today’s assigned reading Jesus learns that John the Baptist has been beheaded by King Herod.  The solitude he seeks he will not find.  The crowds who follow move to the place he intends to set shore.  When Jesus makes landfall they are already there waiting for him.  The text tells us that Jesus has compassion for them and cures their sick.

When it is evening, the disciples urge Jesus to send everyone to nearby villages to get something to eat.  What follows has strong Eucharistic overtones.  Jesus takes the little food they have, blesses it, breaks it, and distributes it.  Everyone – and the numbers are in the thousands – gets something to eat and has enough.  No one is left out and nothing is left to waist.  Even the crumbs are picked up.

While there is much that can be said about this story, let me say this: communion can happen any place at any time anywhere. 

The rite and ritual we engage on Sunday morning is helpful in that it makes communion a regular feature of the rhythm of our week.  It strengthens and sustains us in ways we would miss if we did not participate in it on a consistent basis.  But, when we ask in Eucharistic Prayer C, “Open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us,” we are proclaiming that this moment in church is not an end unto itself.  It is meant to enable us to identify better the opportunities for communion that present themselves all of the time in our daily life and drudgery.

There seems to be some common elements to these kinds of ‘communion’.  Some or all may be present.  There are people.  There is food.  There is thankfulness.  There is sharing.  Barriers are overcome, obstacles navigated, challenges yield to possibilities.  Typically, it involves something innocuous like a Ritz cracker more than, say, a Ruth’s Chris steak.  Whatever it is, it is an intersection of people with one another and with creation.  It is a moment in which the divine is unmistakably present.  We say of sacraments that they are a visible means of an invisible grace.  When communion happens, no matter what form or shape it takes, there is grace.  Always there is grace.

This morning’s Old Testament lesson contains what for me is one of the powerful and poignant episodes in all of Scripture.  It is the night before Jacob is to meet his brother Esau whom he cheated out of the birth right years earlier.  At that time, Esau swore he would kill his brother given the chance, so Jacob fled far away.  But now, with Jacob returning home, Esau has his chance.  Jacob spends the night alone, by a brook, and there becomes engaged in a wrestling match with another.  At first it is not at all clear who this person is.  Is it his brother or perhaps one of his soldiers?  Is it a river troll – they were common in Jewish mythology?  Is it an angel sent from God?  At daybreak the wrestler wants to leave, but Jacob will not let go.  The wrestler strikes a blow to Jacob’s hip, dislocating it, but still Jacob clings to his adversary.  He insists of a blessing.  The blessing is this: his name is changed from Jacob (which in Hebrew means to cheat) to Israel (which means one who has striven with God and with humans and has prevailed).  Jacob comes to realize that all night long (and perhaps all of his life) he has been wrestling with God.

Jacob’s experience is also a kind of communion, but one very different from the feeding of the five thousand and certainly very different from the feeding of the deer.  First and foremost, this communion is contentious. 

The other book I read on vacation was Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.  It is the story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic athlete interred as a POW by the Japanese in World War II.  His experience, first set adrift on a life raft in the vast Pacific Ocean and then as a POW, was absolutely horrific beyond words.  How he survived is hard to imagine.  When he came home after the war he found it difficult to reengage life.  He became, among other things, a raging alcoholic.  His wife left him, but then came back.  Eventually she got him to go to a Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles.  He walked out.  She got him to go a second time.  Allow me to read for you another passage: 

What God asks of men, Graham said, is faith.  His invisibility is the truest test of that faith.  To know who sees him, God makes himself unseen.

Louis shone with sweat.  He felt accused, cornered, pressed by a frantic urge to flee.  As Graham asked for heads to bow and eyes to close, Louis stood abruptly and rushed to the street, towing [his wife] behind him.  “Nobody leaving”, said Graham.  “You can leave while I’m preaching, but not now.  Everybody is still and quite.  Every head bowed, every eye closed.”  He asked the faithful to come forward.

Louis pushed past the congregants in his row, charging for the exit.  His mind was tumbling.  He felt enraged, violent, on the edge of explosion.  He wanted to hit someone.

As he reached the aisle, he stopped.  [His wife], the rows of bowed heads, the sawdust under foot, the tent around him, all disappeared.  A memory long beaten back, the memory from which he had run the evening before, was upon him.

Louis was on the raft.  There was gentle Phil crumped up before him.  Mac’s breathing skeleton, endless ocean stretching away in every direction, the sun lying on them, the cunning body of sharks, waiting, circling.  He was a body on a raft, dying of thirst.  He felt words whisper from his swollen lips. It was a promise thrown at heaven, a promise he had not kept, a promise he had allowed himself to forget until just this instant: If you will save me, I will serve you forever.  And then, standing under a circus tent on a clear night in downtown Los Angeles, Louis felt rain falling.

It was the last flashback he would ever have.  Louis let go of his [his wife] and turned toward Graham.  He felt supremely alive.  He began walking.

“This is it,” said Graham.  “God has spoken to you.  You come on.”

[His wife] kept her eyes on Louis all the way home.  When they entered the apartment, Louis went straight to his cache of liquor.  It was the time of night when the need usually took hold of him, but for the first time in years, Louis had no desire to drink.  He carried the bottles to the kitchen sink, opened them, and poured the contents into the drain.  Then he hurried through the apartment, gathering packs of cigarettes, the secret stash of girlie magazines, everything that was a part of his ruined years.  He heaved it all down the trash chute.

In the morning he woke feeling cleansed…  That morning, he believed, he was a new creation.

Zamperini’s certainly was a contentious communion that, like Jacob’s, was life changing.

I have given this sermon the less than clever title “Communion Happens”.  There are communions we might miss if our eyes are not open to see the hand of God at work in the world about us and there are communions me want to resist because they involve God’s deep desire to touch some aspect of the brokenness of our lives.  I have known both.  It is possible to walk past the former and to walk away from the latter.   It is possible to ignore the wonder and mystery of life.  It is possible to avoid at all costs personal transformation and healing.  As people of faith we seek to find moments of communion at every moment in our lives in every place we are through every way it might present itself.  We are a Eucharistic people who sense and believe that God the Holy One is in our midst.  It is a truth both fabulous and frightening, both awesome and awful.  But never forget that communion is always enveloped in grace.  Sometimes that grace is amazing, other times it can be painful.  I always keep in my mind the image of Jacob – now Israel – limping into the sunrise over the Promised Land and returning home, an injury marking his struggle through life but finally healed and whole.  Communion happens and when we partake of it we are better for it.  All praise to the One for each and every time God reaches out to us… in mystery, in wonder, in challenge, in need.

Sowing & Gentleness

After six years in my house on Saratoga St. I now mark time by weeding seasons.  I don’t need a calendar to know what time of the year it is.  All I have to do is check out the crop of weeds that is coming up.  I have winter weeds that must be pulled by early spring, spring weeds that make their way up as soon as the winter weeds are gone, summer weeds that keep coming back every time it rains, and fall weeds that fill in the beds when everything else is shutting down.  During times of heavy growth I weed until the trash can is full and then hold off until the next Tuesday when garbage truck comes by to empty it.  As I work in the yard I am mindful of the old quip that goes weeds always win because they get to bat last.  It is summer now, which means crabgrass is everywhere.  The humorist Dave Barry observed that crabgrass can grow on a bowling ball in an airless room.  I don’t doubt that at all.

Weeds play a central role in today’s Gospel reading.  The kingdom of heaven is like a farmer who sows good seed in a field, but at night the enemy comes and sows weeds.  When the wheat comes up so do the weeds.  What should be done about it?  Nothing.  In attempting to pull up the weeds the crop too will be damaged.  Best to wait until the harvest to sort it all out.

That there are “weeds” in this world there can be no doubt.  All you have to do is take a casual glance at the news to confirm it. 

Earlier this week Sally Duncan posted a link to a New York Times article on the refugee crisis coming out of Honduras.  Gang violence there has gotten so bad that some teachers have to pay a “war tax” in order to be allowed into the school were they work.   The article chronicles the experience of several Honduran children, including 14-year-old Carlos Baquedano Sánchez.  His home is a shack made of corrugated tin in a neighborhood known as “Little Hell.”  When he was seven he went to work in a dump picking through garbage in order to find iron and copper to recycle.  He makes only a dollar or two a day, but older boys often beat him to steal his haul or his pay.  Typically, Carlos goes without food at least two days a week.

He is under constant pressure to join local gangs and sell drugs.  When Carlos was nine he barely escaped two gangs that tried to rape him while terrified neighbors looked on.  He has known eight people who were murdered and seen three people killed right in front of him.  He dreams of being an engineer or mechanic, but quit school after the sixth grade because he was too afraid to go there.  Carlos told the reporter that “a lot of kids know what can happen in school.  So they leave.”

The Episcopal Church is responding to the crisis of unaccompanied refugee children crossing our border by offering humanitarian aid through local churches.  Children are being fed, clothed, and sheltered while the legal and political processes play out.  I realize this is a sensitive issue that creates tremendous debate in our country, but even if you hold that these “illegal immigrants” should be rounded up and put on a bus back to where they came from, surely as a Christian you support our church’s efforts to make sure they go with clean clothes and a bag lunch.

Shift the field from our southern border to Gaza City.  Did you know that the Episcopal Church has a diocese in Jerusalem?  Did you know that the Diocese of Jerusalem maintains a hospital in Gaza City?  Even though the hospital has suffered structural damage from airstrikes, the staff has maintained a round the clock presence to care for the wounded.  Their food, fuel for generators, and medical supplies are running out.  Abigail Nelson, Senior Vice President for Programs at Episcopal Relief & Development (who I have met at the conferences I have attended), is quoted in a press release as saying,

“We are helping our partner in Jerusalem care for those most vulnerable, particularly the injured and women and children affected by the airstrikes in Gaza.  Our assistance will help the hospital provide life-saving treatment and compassionate aid, and our prayers are with them as they carry out their work in very difficult conditions.”

The Bishop of the Diocese of Jerusalem points out that this hospital provides care to the community regardless of faith or ability to pay, including counseling support for patients and families severely affected by the violence.  He writes, “Civilians exposed to heavy bombing have been killed, injured, traumatized, in some cases left homeless and without food.”  He also notes that some children have lost their entire families.

When I read about Malaysia Flight 17 or about the situations in Honduras and Gaza City the weeds in my own yard don’t seem to matter much.

Like other parables, the one we read this morning neatly divides people into one of two groups – children of the kingdom and children of the evil one.  I find that in life such distinctions are not always so clear.  While we can name certain actions as right or wrong, the person doing the acting is much more complex.  The “field” that is them contains a mixture of wheat and weeds.  And if we are born into this world basically being like an empty field, what grows in us is largely dependent on the seeds that are sown in us.  We are also influenced by the “fields” around us.  It is tough to bring in a clean harvest if you grow up in a field surrounded by weeds.  Those seeds have a way of spreading.

If you used today’s parable to construct an ethic for dealing with evil, you would conclude that the best solution is to do nothing; to let good and evil grow side by side until the final judgment where God will give to each his or her due.  And while it may be true to the teaching of this particular parable, that does not strike me as a very good ethic. 

It is better to see this parable as a part of an intricate tapestry created by all the stories and teachings in the bible.  It provides one unique element to a much broader, fuller, and complete response to evil.  I hear it saying that we must be gentle with sin.  Not soft, but gentle.  Some in the Christian tradition obsess about every little sin.  They see nothing good anywhere, but focus only on the bad.  They cannot see the shine through the tarnish.  Those people who approach others in this way, but not themselves, we call hypocrites.  Those people who see themselves only in this dark light we call tormented.  Those people who can live with their own imperfections and abide with the imperfections of others we call gentle.

I have noticed something about weeding in my beds over these last few years.  As the plants I put in take hold they begin to spread.  The Black-eyed Susans, for example, have more than doubled the land they cover.  As a result, there is less and less to weed each year.  As I said, being gentle with sin does not mean being soft on it.  The more you cultivate what is good in your life, the less opportunity what is bad will have to thrive. 

The good Lord continues to work on me, thankfully.  Last Tuesday I met some friends for dinner in downtown Hampton.  As I walked back to my car I passed a gentleman sitting in a folding chair outside a restaurant.  I said hello to him and he to me.  And then he asked if I could spare some money for a homeless person.  “Not tonight,” I said without breaking stride.  “God bless you,” he said as I walked away.  “God bless you,” I replied without looking back.

Several weeks ago we had a young man visit our church on Sunday morning looking for food and money.  He has been here before and, because his demeanor is somewhat angry and confrontational, he has not been warmly received – especially by me.  Well, on this particular Sunday he sat on the bench in the Parish Hall and I sat near him to make sure he behaved himself.  At one point Kitty Quillin sat down next to him, put her arm around him, and said, “You look like you are having a hard day.”  “I am,” he responded.  And although their conversation was brief, for me it was life-changing.  Through her act of kindness, compassion, and gentleness I realized that I had failed to see the humanity of this person.  He has been back a couple of times and I have also run in to him around town.  I am trying now to engage him as a child loved by God, not some problem I need to protect this church from.

Back to Hampton.  As I walked to my car, I thought about Kitty’s act and the man I had just passed.  I drove back to where he was sitting, got out of my car, and apologized for the dismissive way that I treated him.  I told him that he did not deserve that.  I asked how long he had been homeless and he told me a little bit of his story.  I told him a little bit of mine.  I asked if $5 would help and he gratefully received it.  “My name is Keith,” I told him.  “I’m Kevin,” he responded.  “Kevin,” I said, “It is good to meet you.  I will keep you in my prayers.”  “Keith,” he said, “I will pray for you.”  I’ll let all of you decide who needs prayers more.

I try to be gentle with myself and I hope this is a helpful witness for you to hear.  I am not at all satisfied with the weeds in the field that is me, but I can’t begin to describe how grateful I am to have my heart broken open so that a new crop of compassion and kindness can be sown.  None of us is perfect, but I suspect most of us are trying to be better people – trying to live into the vows we make through our baptismal covenant with God.  Today’s parable suggests that we should nurture what is good in us and be gentle with what is not.  It is a long time before the harvest and there is much that is good growing in each one of us.

As You Sow You Grow

This morning we hear the first parable recorded in Matthew’s gospel – the parable of the Sower and the Seed.  There is no way of knowing if this was the first parable Jesus told because Matthew does not record things in chronological order.  He chooses rather to group similar things: first teachings, then miracle stories, and then parables.  We will be hearing several of his stories over the next few Sundays.

The Sower and the Seed is straight forward enough.  It explains why different people receive the good news of God’s kingdom in different ways.  The evil one works on some the way birds eat seed.  Some folks have limited depth and, like seed in shallow soil, lack a sufficient ‘root’ system to sustain the faith.  Like seed that falls among thistles, some people are so tangled up in the cares of the world that way of the kingdom gets choked out.  And some people, like good soil, receive the word and it produces a bountiful harvest in them. 

While Jesus’ parable tends to lop people into on category or another, I recognize each of the soil conditions as being present in my own life.  I have areas where I am particularly susceptible to the evil one.  There are other areas where I am shallow or indifferent.  There are still other areas where I care more about the world than the kingdom.  And there are parts of me that are open to God and, hopefully, very productive.  Both by the grace of God and through some effort of my own, I hope that this part of the ‘field’ that is me is growing.

I like too that Jesus identifies how some harvest produces grain a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.  It suggests that each of us will be productive in our own particular way.  I will yield more fruit by teaching or preaching or volunteering in the Food Pantry than by singing in the choir, although I still respond to God’s kingdom through the church’s hymnody (I just try not to belt it out too loud!).  Where are you most productive (the hundredfold), where do you contribute something significant (the sixtyfold), and where do you make a difference simply by participating (the thirtyfold)?

In the parable as Jesus tells it he sees himself as being the sower.  He is the one who is spreading the news of the kingdom and we are the soil receiving that seed.  But it is helpful for us to change roles and to ponder how we ourselves are sowers.  We now are the ones who share the Good News of God in Christ.  We now are the ones who spread the kingdom of God through word and deed.  How are we doing?

In Jesus’ day a farmer prepared a plot of land for planting.  When it was ready he walked the plot scattering seed as he went.  This method of broadcasting, especially when caught by the wind, meant that some of the seed would fall on ground not cultivated.  While a sower would not be sloppy about the work, neither would he be restrictive or tentative.  First and foremost, you have to sow seeds if you want to produce a harvest.  It is an act that is one part adventure, one part daring, one part curiosity, and one part faithfulness, all held together by a sense of grace and hope – something interesting may come of this.

I have been sowing some seeds of late that may produce an interesting harvest.  Some of you know that I post my sermons on a blogsite – checkoutthesermons.blogspot.com.  I know that some of you go there and revisit my sermons after you hear them on Sunday morning.  Some of you, when you cannot be here on Sunday, go there to read what you missed.  And some of you share them with friends and family members who live out of town but want to remain in touch.  In the five years I have been posting sermons there has been nearly 7,500 pageviews on the site.  That is a kind of seed sowing and you never know who it will reach.

This became abundantly clear to me last Monday when I received an e-mail from James Goodman, who wrote a book I quoted in a sermon two weeks ago.  A friend of his came across that sermon and e-mailed him the link.  He saw it and wanted me to thank me for my careful reading of his book on the Binding of Isaac and for mentioning it in my sermon.  I was both amazed and terrified by the e-mail: amazed at the reach my words have simply by putting him on the internet and terrified at the prospect of being read and scrutinized by people much more knowledgeable and capable than me.  I was relieved that the e-mail from Mr. Goodman did not end with “you will be hearing from my lawyers and I will be contacting your bishop.”   I always take preaching very seriously and hold myself to a high standard because you deserve nothing less and God’s word demands it.  Ultimately, posting my sermons heightens my sense of responsibility in positive ways knowing that I do not know where my words are going.

Here is another seed I am sowing: I am organizing a September bike ride in Williamsburg to raise money for Camp Chaco and for Episcopal Relief & Development.  I have participated in events like this, but never have spearheaded one before.  Like blogging, it is both amazing and terrifying.  I am grateful for help I am receiving from various people.  Ann Turner, the communications officer of the diocese, worked with me to select and set-up an on-line registration and fund-raising site.  I now know infinitely more about this than I did a few months ago.  I have found a website that allows me to map out riding routes that lists directions, mileage, and even elevation changes.  I am meeting this week with a member of Bruton Parish who is an avid biker and member of a large cycling club.  I have no idea where this will all end – hopefully the legal waivers attached to registration will keep me from going to prison in the event that something goes wrong – but I am excited about the possibility of raising money and awareness for two great ministries of our church.

I think there is a direct link between congregational vitality and seed sowing: the more people who sow seeds the greater the vitality of the church.  Did you know that Debbie Askew is running a summer horse camp for parishioners two days a week at her farm?  On Tuesdays she has younger children come out and Thursdays are for older children.  They work with the horses, ride, share a lunch, a craft, and a bible study.  Our kids love it and are learning a lot about horses and about being in community with one another.  What a great ministry!

As I said earlier, sowing the seeds of the kingdom is an act that is one part adventure, one part daring, one part curiosity, and one part faithfulness, all held together by a sense of grace and hope – a belief that something interesting may come of it.  I see this faith at work when someone offers a bible study or volunteers in the Food Pantry or signs up to host a Coffee Hour or grills up burgers and dogs for a Sunday cookout. 

It seems to be true that the more seeds a person sows the more the soil that is that person becomes open to the seeds that God is sowing.  As you sow you grow.  What adventure would you like to engage with God?  What might you dare?  What peaks your interest?  What is faithful to the gifts God has entrusted to you?

Heavy Yokes

Jesus said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

How was your Fourth of July?  Did you get to cook out or cook in?  Did you have any friends over?  Did you have a few drinks?  Did you maybe overdo it a little bit?  If so, you are in good company.  There is someone else I know who always enjoyed having a good time and knew how to celebrate with friends on special occasions.  Jesus of Nazareth.  Yes, that is right, Jesus!  In today’s Gospel reading he acknowledges that his critics think he is a glutton and a drunkard.  His critics also don’t care much for his choice of company, complaining that he is friends with tax collectors and sinners.

This highlights something we see woven throughout the gospels: Jesus approached religion very differently than did the religious leaders of his day.  For them, religion was a duty, an obligation, perhaps even a burden.  It was laden with rules and requirements that spelled out in exacting detail what one must do in order to be clean and holy and right in the eyes of the Lord.

Jesus takes a different approach.  For him religion is life-giving and life-affirming, rather than life-restricting and life-denying.  “We humans were not made so that there would be someone to keep the Sabbath laws,” he taught, “rather, the Sabbath was made for us so that we might have a day of rest from our work.”  “All of the laws come down to this,” he said, “Love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.”

In the Christian tradition an ox’s yoke is an image of discipleship.  It suggests that we are bound to something that guides and directs our actions in life.  Jesus notices that those who understand religion to be nothing more than rules and obligations are weary and carrying heavy loads.  He invites them to change yokes, to take on his yoke in order to be guided by him.  When Jesus says “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” he is saying that his approach to religion gives life.  It does not take it away.

The burden of a heavy yoke runs deep in the Hebrew tradition.  When the Israelites came into the Promised Land they assimilated into a region already inhabited by numerous clans and tribes.  These varied groups practiced all manner of different things.  The Lord God gave Moses The Kedoshim, or Holiness Code, along with a healthy dose of ‘do’ and ‘don’t’ laws to follow in order that God’s priests and God’s people would be holy (literally ‘set apart’) from the culture around them.  God’s people were not to blend in, but to stand out by standing for something very different.

In preparation for the program at our Wednesday evening pot-lucks I have had the wonderful opportunity to reread the Book of Leviticus.  It contains of plethora of directions.  Here are some of the laws about what can and cannot be eaten:

·   All animals with divided hoofs that eat cud are acceptable with the exception of camels, badgers, hares, and pigs (I’m thinking our cookout after the service could be a code breaker).

·   All water or sea creatures with fins and scales, but none without fins and scales (so much for shrimp cocktail and crab cakes).

·   No eagles, vultures, osprey, buzzards, kites, ravens, owls, cormonrant, water hen, stork, heron, hoopee or bat (well, God didn’t have to tell me I can’t eat bats because I was already on board with that one).

·   No winged insects except locust, crickets, and grasshoppers.

After these dietary laws follow copious instructions about what a person who touches a carcass must do in order to be clean again.  Women are unclean and impure after childbirth.  Unclean for seven days and impure for 33 days after giving birth to a boy, 14 days and 66 days after giving birth to a girl.  There is an entire chapter set aside for how to deal with this.

Perhaps the most unappealing section of Leviticus is the one that describes various skin diseases and how the priest is to examine people for them.  A lengthy process is laid out for declaring a person clean from leprosy and the kinds of offerings that person is to make over a period of time.  Priests were charged with going into a leper’s home to make an inspection.  I am glad none of this is in my job description! 

The Lord God is concerned with balding.  Here is what is said to Moses:  “If anyone loses the hair from his head, he is bald but he is clean.  If he loses the hair from his forehead and temples, he has baldness of the forehead but he is clean.  But if there is on the bald head or the bald forehead a reddish-white diseased spot, it is a leprous disease… and he is unclean.” (13:40-42).  I think I make the cut!

Here is a list of other subjects covered in Leviticus:

·   Bringing sacrifices to the tent of meeting.

·   Prohibitions against eating blood.

·   Prohibitions against uncovering the nakedness of kin.

·   Prohibitions against certain sexual practices, especially when linked to pagan rituals and worship.

·   Prohibitions against eating sacrificed food after it is two days old.

·   Commands not to reap an entire harvest or to pick up fallen grapes.  These are for the poor.

·   Commands on how to treat the disadvantaged.

·   No cross-breeding, cross planting, or clothing of mixed material (19:19).

·   No witchcraft, haircuts, beard trimming, or tatoos commemorating the dead.

·   Do not make your daughter a prostitute.

·   Treat aliens well.

·   Do not cheat other people.

·   No child sacrifices.

·   No mediums or wizards.

·   Special instructions for priests (with special emphasis on not accepting animals for sacrifice that are less than perfect).

·   The appointment of festivals – Passover, Unleavened Bread, first fruits, atonement, harvest (booths).

You cannot begin to imagine the complexity that emerges around making sacrifices.  First, there are several different kinds of sacrifices and while they may involve the same things to be sacrificed, different things must be done depending on the purpose.  Sometimes the priests eat the meat that has been sacrificed and sometimes they don’t.  Two of Aaron’s sons make a mistake and throw out what they are to eat and the results are, well, not pretty.

And speaking of things that are not pretty, let me introduce you to a little tradition known as The Ordeal of Bitter Water from the 5^th chapter of the Book of Numbers.  It provides the Lord’s direction for a husband who suspects his wife has been unfaithful.  If a husband is overcome with a “spirit of jealousy”, i.e., thinks his wife has strayed, he is to take her to the priest.  He presents to the priest a grain offering to which the priest adds holy water and dust from the floor.  This mixture becomes known as the Curse of Bitter Water.  The wife in question drinks the potion.  If it makes her violently sick then she is guilty.  If it does not she is innocent. 

And as if all these religious decrees were not burdensome enough, centuries of commentary gets added to them the way more and more laws get tacked on to the US tax code.  Eventually no one understands them and everyone lives in fear of being wrong.  No one wants to be audited either by the IRS or by God.

The initial value of all these laws was to keep the Israelites as a people set apart from the culture around them.  Some of this related to distinctiveness – they do this, but we do that.  Some of it related to practicality and common sense – they eat whatever, but we won’t eat things that may make us sick.  Some of it represented an advance in civilization – you sell your daughters into prostitution but we will not.  And some of it – like the Bitter Waters – is ripe for reform. 

Whatever purpose it served, by Jesus’ day it had become oppressive.  It is against this backdrop that he says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  C.S. Lewis once said that Christians don’t think God loves us because we are good, but that God makes us good because God loves us.  I think that is a wonderful yoke to carry.

I’ll leave you with a blessing from the Methodist writer William Arthur Ward, whose thinking inspired many over the course of the last century:

   The adventure of life is to learn.
   The purpose of life is to grow.
   The nature of life is to change.
   The challenge of life is to overcome.
   The essence of life is to care.
   The opportunity of life is to serve.
   The secret of life is to dare.
   The spice of life is to befriend.
   The beauty of life is to give.

Now there is a yoke I would like to bear.  Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.