King of the Hill

 

Matthew 16:21-28

Proper 17 / Year A 

Greetings my brothers and sisters in Christ.

When I was five years old I won a supermarket contest with a prize of $10.  As you might imagine I was itching to spend it, so off we went to a local toy store.  I fell in love with a game called King of the Hill, a picture of which is in your bulletin.  I remember distinctly it cost $5.99.  I remember this because I thought you had to have exact change to make a purchase.  So I said to my mother, “Can I trade you my $10 for $5.99?”  Puzzled, she agreed and I bought my game.

The object of King of the Hill is to move your marble up anyone of numerous circuitous paths.  A spinner tells you how many spaces you get to advance on your turn.  Each space is a little dimple in the path.  Now, to make the game more interesting, some spaces are holes.  If this is where you land your marble disappears into the mountain and reappears randomly at one of several tunnel openings lower on the path.  At the very top of the mountain is a crown and the first person to get a marble to it is the King of the Hill.

This simple children’s game provides some insight into this morning’s reading from the gospel of Matthew.  When Jesus tells his followers about the challenges which await him in Jerusalem, Peter suggests nothing but good times lie ahead.  Surely someone as special as Jesus will be subject only to special treatment.  It is as if Peter is saying to Jesus “Your marble will move right up the hill without a hiccup.”  Jesus responds by saying, “If you want to be my disciple you must pick up your cross and follow me.”

In this I hear him saying the way forward in life will not always be easy.  There will be set backs, disappointments, failures, suffering, and (yes) even death.  You can’t avoid them.  You can’t go around them.  You just have to go through them.  You just have to carry your cross, spin again on your next turn and keep moving forward.  The good news is eventually, in the end, we are promised a crown of glory which will never fade away.  

I look forward to being with you all next Sunday.  Until then… be good… do good… and go with God.

Keith+

An Offering to God

 

Romans 12:1-8

Proper 16 / Year A

St. Paul writes:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

What have you brought with you today to offer to God?  Perhaps some money.  Some of you have come to offer a song or a hymn, others an act of service such as ushering or reading or preparing the altar.  What did you bring here today to offer?  This is one question I want you to ponder.

Here is another:  Why did you bring it?  What are you hoping to accomplish by your offering?  If you are the Kitchen Queen, perhaps you brought a tasty treat to foster fellowship and hospitality after the service.  If you are the organist perhaps you prepared a voluntary to raise our spirits through classic music composed to the glory of God.  If you are acolyting for the very first time, perhaps you want to do something useful for the church all the while taking another step toward adulthood.  Why did you bring your offering?

The Hebrew word for ‘sacrifice’ is korbán, which literally means “to come closer.”  Given this understanding, the purpose of every sacrifice or offering is to get closer to God, and, in some form or fashion, to get closer to God’s community in this place.   

When it comes to making an offering, Paul encourages us not to set aside some small part of ourselves – what we have or what we can do –  but rather to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice.  Like we pray in Rite 1 Holy Eucharist:

And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee…

This kind of prayer where we offer something to God is called an ‘oblation.’  We offer bread and wine in order that it may be transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ.  We offer our selves in order to be transformed into the image of Christ.

There is a story about St. Jerome, the fifth century figure who translated bible from Greek into Latin. God asks him, “What do you have for me today, Jerome?  He answers, “Lord, I give you my prayer.”  “Good!  And what else?”  Jerome cites his self-discipline, his vigils, his love for those who came to visit him, and more.   God responds, “Anything else?”  Jerome, dejected, says, “I don’t know what else I can give you!”  The Lord then says to him: “There is still something you haven’t given me.  You haven’t given me your sins!”

I like this story because it suggests there is nothing we need to hide or hold back when we offer ourselves to God.  A prayer by Pedro de la Cruz offers the same lesson, but in more detail:

Lord, I offer you all of me, all that I am and all that I am not.  I offer you every good decision and every regrettable mistake, every great accomplishment and every missed opportunity, every divinely inspired gift and every unapplied talent, every success and every miserable failure.  I offer you all joy and all heartache, every kindness and every bitterness to be forgotten, every twinkle in my eye and every tear flowing down my cheek, every great love and each lost or irrecoverable act of charity.

I offer you every quiet reflective moment and all of the unneeded chaos around me, all things holy and good in me and all things in need of greater purification.  I give you every joyful memory and every bitter pain, each future moment and every missed opportunity to love, every kind act and each regrettable harsh word, all meekness and humility within me and every misplaced prideful thought, every virtue and every weak vice, every laugh and all misery mixed with weeping.

I give you every healthy breath and every weakness of mind and body, every attempt at chastity and every unworthy lustful thought, every restful repose and every anxious, sleepless night.  O Lord, you can have all of me, the beauty that you’ve deposited deep within me and the emptiness of my sinful faults.  I love you and I am yours completely.  Amen.

I ask you again… what did you bring today to offer and why did you bring it.  What are you trying to hide or hold back?  I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

The 'Dog' who Opens Jesus' Eyes

 

Matthew 15:10-28

Proper 15 / Year A

Some biblical commentators – perhaps most – refer to the second half of this morning’s gospel reading as “The Testing of the Canaanite Woman’s Faith”, contending Jesus’ rudeness is merely a method to assess her worthiness. They just cannot bear or believe Jesus could be so cruel and insensitive.  Does he really give her the silent treatment?  Does he really refuse to help her?  Does he actually call her a dog?  Can he really be so blind that she must open his eyes in order for him to see her humanity?  Well, the answer is either it is all a ploy to test her faith or yes, he really did these ugly and insensitive things.

Our doctrine holds Jesus is perfect, sinless.  His sinlessness is essential if he is going to atone for our sins.  But Jesus is also human and a product of a particular culture and ethnic heritage.  As such he is raised, as we are, in a society which has particular ideas about such things as the role of men, the status of women, and the value of children.  We find Jesus comfortable with the language of slave and master.  And, at times, he expresses his culture’s bias against foreigners. 

As a product of his culture, Jesus consistently elevates the dignity of every human being: defending a woman who listens to his teaching rather than working in the kitchen, criticizing his disciples for trying to shoo away children who want to be blessed, reaching out a touching a leper… I could go on and on.  But here, in this one instance, Jesus manifests the limitations of his cultural upbringing. 

His silence and then his insulting dismissiveness are ironic considering his teaching in the first part of the reading.  Religious leaders from Jerusalem pay a visit on Jesus in his hometown.  They are checking out what he is all about.  They question why his disciples are lax about some of the purification rules before eating.  Jesus answers it is not what goes into the body through the mouth which makes a person unclean, it is what come out of the mouth – the words from your heart – which defiles.  While typical of how Jesus consistently reinterprets the rules of his religion to deepen them spiritually, he himself violates this in the very next paragraph of the reading. 

He leaves his home – most likely to get away from the nagging and nit-picking religious leaders – and heads to the district of Tyre and Sidon; two coastal towns on the Mediterranean in present day southern Lebanon.  Then, like now, it is home to a lot of people outside of the Jewish lineage.  Jesus must know he is going to encounter foreigners while there.  

Yet, he seems taken unawares by his encounter with the Canaanite woman.  He appears to be put off, annoyed, maybe wondering if there is anywhere he can go just to get away.  His behavior reminds me of how I react when I encounter a panhandler outside a store.  I want to look away and pass on by.  I feel irritated and guilty at the same time.  Do I really have to do what this person wants me to do for him?  Let’s just say, these encounters seldom bring out the best in me.

And Jesus’ encounter with this woman doesn’t bring out the best in him.  When the disciples encourage him to send her away Jesus articulates his mission statement: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  It is not clear from the text if the woman is privy to his comment or not, but regardless, she kneels before him and begs for help.  He responds with his comment about not taking food from the table and feeding it to dogs.  She responds with what I might call The Harper Rule (Harper is my Jack Russell): “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table” (and thank God for this in my home!).

It is at this moment Jesus’ eyes are opened and he see before him not a foreigner, and certainly not a dog, but a mother… a desperate mother who possesses a deep, resilient faith.  Hers is a faith so strong, it upends a cultural limitation and assumption Jesus has absorbed since childhood.  Jesus wakes up and in a profound way he progresses more toward living out God’s dream for all people.

It might sound odd to think the Son of God has work to do on himself, that he makes discoveries about himself along the way, that he more and more grows into the person God desires him to be.  And to be honest, I feel a little bit like I am flirting with heresy here.  No wonder so many commenters elect to say Jesus is merely testing her faith, even though there is not a single shred of evidence in the text to support this. 

And as odd as it feels, there is something very powerful and encouraging about looking at this passage in this new way.  If Jesus can grow and change and develop, then so can we.  And most of us can and do.  I suspect none of us are the exact same person with the exact same views we held when we were – pick an age – 10, 15, 25.  We have all been walking a path of faithfulness with the intention of getting closer and closer to God’s dream for us and for all people.  Today we learn Jesus walked this same path.  We pray he will be our companion and guide along the way.

The Value of Vulnerability

 

Matthew 14:22-33

Proper 14 / Year A

It has not been a good eight days for St. Peter.  In last Sunday’s reading, after he suggests they build three mountaintop booths – one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus – no less of an authority than God the Father Almighty tells him to be quiet and listen to Jesus.  And now today, we find Peter being chastised for his lack of faith after stepping out of the boat and walking on the waves toward Jesus before beginning to sink.  Eight days, two readings, and two rebukes.  No, these are a couple of Sundays the great apostle most likely would rather have other readings assigned.

Still, there is something endearing about Peter and his ability to say or do the wrong thing at the wrong time.  Like they say in baseball, it is better to go down swinging than to strike out with the bat on your shoulder.  I have said before I would rather be Peter soaking wet from the waist down than be like the other disciples playing it safe back in the boat.  I would rather have Jesus say to me, “Why did you doubt?” than “Why didn’t you even try?”

Why didn’t you try?  Sometimes we don’t try because it just isn’t import to us.  Sometimes it is because we don’t know how to attack the problem.  And sometimes it is because we just don’t want to embarrass ourselves.  We don’t want to look foolish.  We don’t want to set ourselves up for failure.  We don’t want to make ourselves vulnerable. 

Avoiding vulnerability is a major problem, at least according to the researcher and writer Brené Brown.  She holds we all long for connection and a sense of belonging but have a deep-seated fear of being rejected.  The experience of rejection leads to a profound sense of shame; an emotion we seek to prevent at all costs.  She cites many different ways we numb ourselves to limit vulnerability.  If we don’t expose ourselves, if we don’t allow ourselves to be “seen”, then we can’t be hurt. 

According to Brown, this numbing or hiddenness comes at a huge cost because we can’t be selective about it.  We can’t simply decide to minimize risk and maximize reward.  While being vulnerable opens us to possibility of pain and loss, she notes it is also the “birthplace of joy, creativity, belonging, and love.”  Brown contends you cannot eliminate the difficult and uncomfortable feelings in your life without having it take a toll on the things which make you feel gratitude and happiness.

Every happy marriage begins with person getting down on one knee and proposing (vulnerability).  Every book begins with a writer sending a manuscript to a publisher for evaluation and critique (vulnerability).  Every new recipe you try creates the possibility for a new, favorite meal or a very bad dinner (vulnerability). 

The text tells us when Jesus approaches the boat the disciples are afraid because they think they are seeing a ghost.  He says three things to them.  “Take heart.”  “It is I.”  “Do not be afraid.”  Some versions of the bible translate “Take heart” as “Have courage”, noting the Latin and French roots for both words are the same.  Literally translated, “It is I” is “I am”, harkening back to the holy name God reveals to Moses.  “Do not be afraid” is as much of an invitation as it is a command.

These three statements inspire Peter to be vulnerable in the midst of a fearful situation.  Take heart is an invitation to live life to the fullest, even if it opens to the door to failure and rejection.  In the midst of a world we cannot always predict or control, “I am” reminds us one thing is certain: God is with us and God does not change.  Do not be afraid encourages us to live with a sense of possibility rather than acting to avoid the worst outcome.

Many sermons have been preached about why Jesus decides to build the church upon Peter, whom he names as “a rock”.  I don’t know if there is one single quality about him which merits his calling, but surely his willingness to be vulnerable is a major part of the mix.  Nowhere will this be more evident than when he accepts an invitation to visit the gentile home of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, and to baptize him and his family.  It is a bold move which opens the doors of the church to all people.  It also elicits criticism from several of the leaders of the early church, so of whom are the same folks who played it safe by staying in the boat that night on lake.

We live in an anxious time.  When the pandemic began, we learned how to isolate and insolate in order to feel safe.  It was a good strategy at the time, to be sure.  Now, every Sunday after church I sense a deep joy in the Parish Hall as we spend time with one another.  We are experiencing the value of connecting and belonging.  It is an act of vulnerability, not so much in the sense we might be exposed to a communicable disease, but in that we are risking being in relationship (albeit, in a fairly safe place).  As Jesus bid to his followers long ago, he bids to us: “Take heart!  I am!  Do not be afraid!” 

Perhaps this week you might pay attention to opportunities your reject and invitations you accept.  Be mindful of the value of being vulnerable.

Treasures New and Old

 

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Proper 12 / Year A

The American minister Robert Fulghum made quite a sensation when he published a book of short essays in 1986.  The piece which gives the book its title is called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.  It offers folksy wisdom such as play fair, say you are sorry when you hurt somebody, and flush.  It still resonates with us today because we recognize how our lives are built on the foundational truths and values we learned at a young age. 

Those kindergarten lessons are still in us, but we are no longer in kindergarten, are we!  Our life’s project is to apply these basics to an ever-changing, ever-evolving world.  I think this is what Jesus means when he says “the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”  We may be doing new things, but they are rooted in old values. 

Michael Curry, our Presiding Bishop, has been reminding us for almost a decade, “If it isn’t about love, it isn’t about Jesus.”  This is the old, old truth.  What is new about it is his emphasis how God loves everyone – no exceptions.  There are folks who, for various reasons, have been marginalized by our society for generations; who have been told because of the color of their skin or their sexual orientation or their gender identity or their economic status or their lack of education or a host of other different reasons they are second class citizens and thus are less deserving of love and respect.  What is new – rejecting this kind of thinking – is rooted in what is old – Jesus calls his followers to love without limitations or preconditions.

Treasures new and old.  I don’t have to tell you there are some folks who just want the old treasure served up in the way it has always been.  They label what is new as “woke”, which strikes me as an odd term because the opposite (it seems to me) is “asleep”, not exactly a positive virtue.  Every day the governor of Florida picks another societal target to attack in his campaign to make his state the place where woke goes to die.  It all strikes me as very mean, petty, and pointless, except that it pleases the people who treasure only the old.

Russell Moore, a prominent Baptist minister and theologian, cautions against this.  In his newly released book, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America, Moore cautions about the dangers of nostalgia and a desire to return the church to a supposed “golden age.”  He notes surveys which indicate white evangelicals are more likely than other religious groups and the general population to embrace tenets and thinking of white supremacy.  He also links religious nostalgia with foot-dragging on sexual-abuse cover-ups and the expulsion of churches too affirming of role of women in leadership. 

The treasure of what is old can become toxic if it is not accompanied by a treasure that is new.  “Nostalgia”, writes Moore, “—especially of the sort wielded by demagogues and authoritarians—cannot protect religious faith, because it uses religion as a tool for worldly ends, leaving a spiritual void.”  He states it can only be helpful if you understand it to be memories, not blueprints.

Most mainline churches no longer desire to get back to the 1950’s.  We know it isn’t going to happen.  But we are still nostalgic… for February 2020.  “If only we could get back to the way things were before the pandemic,” we say.  There isn’t a day which goes by here at St. Paul’s where I do not long for something we have lost or left behind – a member who no longer attends, a ministry we no longer staff, a program we no longer offer.  What I notice is the more I look back with longing for the old treasure, the less I am able to see and appreciate the new treasures emerging in our common life.

What Russell Moore writes to his fellow Evangelicals applies equally to us:

“Those who wish to hold on to the Old Time Religion must recognize that God is doing something new.  The old alliances and coalitions are shaking apart.  And the sense of disorientation, disillusionment, and political and religious ‘homelessness’ that many Christians feel is not a problem to be overcome but a key part of the process...  [A] pilgrimage cannot start with a road map of certainty but must begin with the cry of faith that says, like the noble disciple Thomas wrongly labeled as a doubter, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?’”

Every week or so someone asks me if I think we will ever reopen the Food Pantry.  “I don’t think so,” I reply.  The Food Pantry isn’t something we learned in kindergarten, to use Fulghum’s analogy.  What we learned in kindergarten was to connect with and care for our neighbors.  The Food Pantry was a fantastic way to do this when we did it.  Now we connect with and care for our community in new ways – partnering with ForKids and the Suffolk Community Outreach Center being just two new manifestations of our old treasure.  More new treasure is on the horizon.

I feel the same way about our worship life, our fellowship, and our formation programs.  These are core elements of our common life – the old treasures – and they are being expressed in new and faithful ways.  As householders in this place known as St. Paul’s, may we continue to bring out treasures new and old, for this is what the kingdom of heaven is like.

Wheat & Weeds

 

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 

Proper 11 / Year A

An aerospace engineer designed a revolutionary new aircraft which promised to be a great critical and commercial success, save for one problem.  Every time the plane got in the air the wings broke off at the fuselage.  Attempts to correct the weakness failed time and again and the designer was baffled.  Finally, when all seemed lost, a janitor spoke up, “I know how to fix it.  Drill a line of small holes across the wings at the place where they snap off.”  Since nothing else had worked the engineer decided to give it a try.  He drilled the holes and the plane flew perfectly.  After the test flight the engineer asked the janitor how he knew this would work.  “If life teaches us one thing it is this,” answered the janitor, “nothing ever tears along the dotted line.”

In a nutshell this is what the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds is all about.  Why don’t things go the way they are supposed to go?  Why do bad things happen in a field sown with good intentions?  Why does the paper never tear along the dotted line?  Why are there weeds?

Jesus makes one clear point in the parable: in this world there is resistance to good.  Want proof?  Just ask Joshua Tanner, a freshman disc jockey at college radio station.  The school took exception to the rap music he was playing sent him a letter.  It stated Tanner could no longer play his music because it was “too spiritually explicit.”  You heard me right.  It seems Tanner was censured for playing Christian rap music.  There is resistance to good. 

But let’s be honest about one thing.  Too many people use this resistance in order to explain away problems of their own making.  A sign in a New York office proclaims, “If you want to kick the behind of the person responsible for most of your troubles you wouldn’t be able to sit down for weeks!”  As we heard a few weeks ago, St. Paul wrote, “The good I want to do, I don’t do.  And what I do not want to do, I do.”  Jack Paar used to say, “My life seems to be one long obstacle course with me as the chief obstacle.”  Several years ago I transplanted what I thought were wildflowers into the beds around my house.  Turns out they are little more than an invasive perennial that doesn’t play nice with other plants.  The servant asks the master, “How did the weeds get into the field?”  Well, sometimes we put them there ourselves. 

Whether it stems from resistance to good or simply is a byproduct of our own devices, life presents us with many difficulties, but the only factor which will determine if they will grind us down or polish us up is what we make of them.  The philosopher Jean Vieujean once said, “There is much in us, but it often takes some obstacle, accident, or hardship to reveal it.”  Aldous Huxley observed, “Experience is not what happens to a person; it is what a person does with what happens to him.”  St. Paul wrote, “The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed.”

There are two options you can take when weeds sprout up in your garden.  There are two paths to go down when you face adversity.  One is typified by the old Jew who had seen everything from the inhumanity of the concentration camps to present day anti-Semitism.  “O Lord,” he prayed in the synagogue, “isn’t it true we are your chosen people?”  A voice boomed back from heaven, “Yes, the Jews are my chosen people.”  “Well then,” moaned the old man, “isn’t it time you chose somebody else?”  This is a path which finds no wheat among weeds in life.  The other path notes before any bottle of medicine can be used for good, the instructions indicate it first must be well-shaken.  Immanuel Kant said a dove might consider wind resistance to be a problem, but without it flight would be impossible.  From this perspective we realize the only path to glory goes not around the weeds, but through them.

The path of adversity can be of great benefit and though life may buffet us with the worst it can offer, we always have the power to choose how we will respond; be it positively or negatively.  A psychologist did a study on two brothers who grew up in a home ruled by an abusive and alcoholic father.  As adults, one of the brothers became just like his dad while the other turned out the exact opposite.  The psychologist privately asked each one why he turned out as he did.  Even though their lives had gone in dramatically different directions, each had the same answer: “What else would you expect with a father like mine?”  It is not what happens to you in life but how you react to it which makes all the difference.

John Claypool was a Baptist preacher before finding his way into the Episcopal Church.  He says of his life everything came easy to him.  He was successful in his ministry.  He had a beautiful wife and great marriage.  They had several happy, well-adjusted children.  Then, without warning, his little girl was diagnosed with Leukemia, a horrible disease which eventually took her life.  Claypool’s world took a cruel and devastating turn.  This is what he said from the pulpit:

“We do not get all the answers and then live life in light of our understanding.  We must rather plunge into life – meeting what we have to meet and experiencing what we have to experience – and in light of our living try to understand.”

These are the words of a person who understands both the wheat and the weeds and why Jesus says to let them grow up together.  When John Claypool wrote a book about his life he gave it the title Tracks of a Fellow Struggler.

I submit it is only possible to live this way in the light of the Gospel.  If Jesus had not claimed to be the Lord of the wheat and the weeds, if our God was not sovereign over the fields of our existence, if there was no point to which befalls us, then why go on?  Thanks be to God all of life, when offered humbly to God, is redeemable.  Thanks be to God the trials and tribulations of the world can never overcome us if we allow the Lord of life to walk with us.  And thanks be to God someday the wheat I plant will be harvested and the weeds – no matter what their origin – will be removed.

The Sower

 

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Proper 10 / Year A

Some commentators refer to Matthew’s thirteenth chapter as “The Sermon from a Boat”, as opposed to the more famous “Sermon on the Mount.”  Jesus is hanging out at on Galilean lakeside when a large crowd gathers around him.  So large, in fact, he has to get into a fishing boat in order to have a space from which to teach.  And teach he does.  Over the next few weeks we will read the content of what has to say, all of which he sets forth in parables.  

The word ‘parable’ comes from two root words - para and bolos.  Para means “alongside of” (think of the word parallel).  Bolas means “to throw” or “to cast.”  So a parable is a story where something is thrown against something else.  For Jesus, his parables are stories of familiar activities and events thrown against deeper and perhaps hidden spiritual things in order to shed light on what the kingdom of heaven is like.

This morning we read what we might call ‘the leadoff hitter’ in Jesus’ all-star story line-up… the sower who spreads seeds.  Now, all parables have been given names, mostly by scholars and bible translators.  These names can be helpful or misleading.  As an example of the later, the title “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” diverts our attention away from the older brother who refuses to welcome back his wayward sibling.  

Some suggest today’s reading should be called “The Parable of the Soils” and to be sure Jesus focuses much attention on the different types of earth which receive the scattered seed resulting in very different outcomes.  But, with this parable, Jesus himself gives it a name so it would seem reckless to deviate from it.  He calls this “The Parable of the Sower.”

Jesus tells us a farmer does the sowing.  He refers to the seed as being ‘the message of the kingdom” and as “the word.”  This suggests farmer is God the Father and the seed is Jesus the Word.  More than one commentator has suggested the farmer, by scattering seed so indiscriminately, is wasteful.  His approach, they contend, should be less random and more targeted.  The farmers who spend this day at the beach listening to Jesus surely are thinking about how carefully they sow resources as precious as seed only where it has the best chance to thrive.

But, as I always say about parables, this is Jesus’ story and he gets to tell it any way he wants to.  Rather than wasteful, what Jesus wants us to know through the metaphor of the farmer with his wide casting method is that God is generous and desires to reach each and every person.  For Jesus, God the Father is not angry, vengeful, or punitive.  For him, God holds there are no exclusions and no outsiders.  The message of the kingdom Jesus proclaims is not MIGA - Make Israel Great Again.  God cares deeply and equally for each and every person and this is why everyone receives the Word without preconditions or limitations.  The seed - the Word of God’s love - is made known to everyone… because everyone is precious to God… no exceptions.  

There are at least two things Jesus understands about his seed.  First, every seed is going to die in or on the ground it which it lands.  Jesus will say in another parable, “Unless a seed falls into the earth and dies it cannot bear fruit.”  Jesus the Word does not come into the world with great power and might, but rather humble and vulnerable.  He says he comes to serve, not to be served.  Humility, vulnerability, and service are the hallmarks of God’s seed once it dies in the soil and erupts into new life.  

The second thing Jesus knows about the seed is not all of it will make it.  Some will sprout up, but for various reasons, not survive.  And rather than try to consign particular individuals, groups, or movements to being one type of soil or another, I am acutely aware how the soil of my own soul is a composite of all four conditions.  A part of me is so densely packed the Word of God never even penetrates it for consideration.  There are other parts of me where the evil one has a hold and it is tough to shake it off.   There is a part of me wrapped up in the cares and concerns of the world and in spite of my intentions, these things chock out God’s Word in my life.  And, thankfully, there are places in my soul where the seeds find fertile soil and produce an abundance of humility, vulnerability, and service.  I am confident you see this in your own life as well. 

Perhaps the best known line from Oscar Wilde’s 1893 play A Woman of No Importance is this: “The only difference between the saint and the sinner is every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”  It is a sentiment much in keeping with the message of today’s parable.  Each person is precious to God and God will withhold nothing in order for any and every one of us to know divine Love.  It is a love which is capable of producing in each of us a harvest of goodness and godliness beyond measure.  Thanks be to God.