Of Thieves, Cheats, and Weeds

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
July 27, 2014

Of Thieves, Cheats, and Weeds

If we are lucky, once in a while a great teacher will come into our lives.  Sometimes that person is a professional teacher.  Sometimes the teacher is an informal mentor or child. In my experience, a great teacher is someone who can make difficult concepts come alive, help us find gifts we did not know we had, and find different ways to explain a teaching until there is a way for everyone to understand.  My 6th grade teacher was such a person.  Jimmie Nell Johnson brought out the best in each student and worked tirelessly to make sure everyone understood what she was trying to explain.  This was back in the day when penmanship was taught in school and we got graded on our handwriting.  One student in our class, a boy named Chuck, had dreadful handwriting and there was nothing Mrs, Johnson could do to help him learn to write legibly.  So, she taught him how to type-this was before babies were born knowing how to work an iPad- and made Chuck feel special in the process.  Mrs. Johnson would simply not give up on a student, even when sometimes we wished she would give up on us.

Jesus seems to be that kind of teacher this morning as he teaches about the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is a difficult concept to grasp, especially once we realize that Jesus is not talking about where we go when we die, but something here on earth.  Good rabbi that Jesus is, we get 5 parables rather than one to explain the mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven.  If gardening  and the parable of the mustard seed makes no sense to us, then perhaps a baking metaphor and thinking about the Kingdom of God as yeast will make more sense.  Or if we need something that will appeal to our sense of adventure, perhaps the idea of buried treasure will make the Kingdom of Heaven come alive for us.  Or if garage saling or fishing is our passion, then we have the merchant in search of fine pearls or the net cast into the sea.  Surely one of those parables will bring the Kingdom of heaven alive for us and help us understand the presence of God in our midst.

However, the Good Rabbi is not giving us a buffet of parables to choose from.  Instead, Jesus gives us a 5 course meal of parables.  The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, and yeast, and buried treasure, and a merchant, and a fish net.  All at the same time.   Jesus calls us to look at all of these parables together to understand something of the kingdom of God.  While taking in all five parables at once can feel a bit like trying to sip from a fire hydrant, what these 5 little parables have in common will help us understand the Kingdom of Heaven.

First, they all involve something small and hidden. The mustard seed is small and hidden in the ground.  Yeast is small and hidden in flour.  The buried treasure is small enough to be buried in the ground.  A pearl is small and hidden among other pearls of lesser value.  The net is not small, but the web pretty much disappears when thrown into the sea to catch fish.

Secondly, each parable involves work.  Someone sowed the mustard seed into the field.  The woman took the yeast and mixed it in with the flour.  Someone had to dig up a field to find the buried treasure.  The merchant had to search for the pearls, and someone had to throw that net into the sea.

        Lastly, in each parable, that which started off small and hidden becomes large and visible.  The mustard seed grows into the greatest of shrubs.  The yeast does it work and creates an enormous amount of dough.  When the treasure is found, the man sells all that he has and buys the whole field so that the treasure is his.  The merchant sells everything he owns to buy the one pearl.  And the net catches fish of every kind.

So, from these parables, we learn that the kingdom of God starts off small, and with work grows into the full stature of the Kingdom of God.

However, the explanation of Jesus' parables is rarely that obvious.  Pretty much anything we undertake starts small and with work matures into full potential. Jesus rarely dispenses common sense.  When we dig a little deeper, we see that each parable is a bit subversive.  Mustard is actually a weed but in this parable the mustard seed is compared with the greatest of all kingdoms, the kingdom of heaven.  Yeast is a symbol of corruption and impurity in Scripture, and is cleaned from homes in preparation for Passover.  Someone who finds buried treasure in someone else's field then buys the field to own the treasure without telling the owner is a thief, and merchants rated right up there with tax collectors and other cheats.  But this cheat sells everything to buy the great pearl, which made it impossible for him to do further business.

From this parable, then, we learn that Jesus can use weeds, thieves and cheats to make the Kingdom of Heaven come alive.  Scripture is full of stories about the way God uses tricksters, cheats, and weeds.  Our reading from Genesis this morning is evidence of this as  Laban tricks Jacob this into marrying Leah before he can marry Rachel.  The tables have been turned on Jacob, since Jacob tricked his father to steal his brother's birth right. This is the family through whom God will bless all the families of the earth!  King David was hardly a paragon of virtue yet God used David to create a great nation, and even Noah had some serious character flaws.

In the reading from Romans this morning, Paul tells us that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor death, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God. Jesus is saying essentially the same thing with his parables this morning.  When we cannot see the kingdom, when it looks like the powers of evil have done their worst, when no rational person would believe that the kingdom is present, when all we can see is war, sickness, and dysfunction, or tricksters, cheats, and weeds, Jesus calls us to believe that we are in the midst of the Kingdom of heaven.  The message of the gospel is that the Kingdom of heaven is present not only when our lives and the world are full of peace and contentment.  The gospel message is that even in the worst of times and places, the seeds of the kingdom of heaven are present.  Jesus the great teacher uses five parables to help us engage the gospel promise that the Kingdom of Heaven will be grown by the least likely people and found in the least likely places.  The great Rabbi wants us to understand that we just might be those people and this just might be that place!
Amen.

Weeding

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
July 20, 2014

Weeding

My guiding principle for discerning what is a good plant and what is a bad plant is simple.  If the plant is pretty, or at least more pretty than ugly, the plant is good.  If the plant is ugly, or more ugly than pretty, the plant is bad.  This is why my husband is in charge of all the plants in our house and in our yard!  By my definition, the obvious plants, like roses, daffodils, even the basil, are safe.  These plants are pretty, therefore, they must be good.  But Queen Anne's lace and those beautiful little purple flowers that grow in the grass are also beautiful.  And those plants, I am told, are weeds.  Why would anyone want to get rid of something so lovely?  On the other hand, the super food kale is quite simply ugly.  The plant is not pleasing to the eye, nose, or to the touch. Some find the leaves pleasant to the taste.  Others disagree.  I would call kale a weed.  And I would be wrong.  My criteria for separating weeds from good plants are admittedly superficial and simplistic, and you really do not want me working in your garden!

However, even I can tell that Jesus is doing some funny gardening this morning.  Our parable begins "The Kingdom of heaven may be compared with someone who sowed good seed in his field."  Even I know to sow good seed!  This is not rocket science.  But, whenever Jesus goes all common sense on us, that is our call to play close attention, because Jesus is not our common sense savior. Then Jesus tells the disciples and the crowds "But when everyone was asleep, the enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat."   Seriously?  Even I know that weeds emerge all on their own.  No enemy is needed to plant them.  Then the slaves come to the Master and said "Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?"  How many masters in New Testament times did their own sowing?  This master clearly has servants, and those servants would have done the hot, dirty work of sowing.  When the slaves are ready to do a little weeding for their master and get rid of the weeds so the good seed can grow, the master stops them.  "In gathering the weeds, you would uproot the wheat along with them.  Let them grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn."  The master clearly has control issues around the wheat and the weeds.

Given the problems in this parable with the way the Master does his farming, most likely Jesus is not giving gardening advice here but is up to something else.  And Jesus explains the parable to the disciples in the next paragraph.  At the end of time the Son of Man, that's Jesus, will send his angels to collect out of the kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and throw them into the fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, which happens to be a favorite phrase of Matthew.  Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father.

Our parable this morning reminds me of  the story in Genesis 2 where God forbids Adam from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  I believe God gives Adam this command not because we are  to be ignorant about the difference between good actions and bad ones, but because we are not to judge people's final destination.  We humans are quick to leap from "that action was wrong" to "that person is bad" to "weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth."  Scripture tells us that humans are made in the image of God and redeemed in Christ, and as Episcopalians we promise to seek and serve Christ in all people in our baptismal covenant.  All people.  Not just those whose actions are righteous in our eyes, or those with whom we agree. All people.

In the story we do hear from Genesis this morning, Jacob has a dream in which God repeats the promise made to his grandfather, Abraham, and reminds Jacob that his offspring shall be like the dust of the earth and all the families of the earth will be blessed in him and his offspring.  Jacob was no model of righteous behavior.  In fact, Jacob was a scoundrel.  Jacob deceived his father and stole his brother's birthright.  Jacob certainly looks like a weed and someone who would qualify for the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth award.  But God is a different kind of gardener and has chosen to work through Jacob and this family to bless all the families of the earth.

Jesus reminds us this morning that we humans cannot always tell the weeds from the wheat, so we are not to be about the business of pronouncing final judgement about who is in the Kingdom of God and who is not.  Weeding is not our job.  This does not mean that we are to ignore violence, condone evil, or endorse oppression.  The gospel calls us to stand up against such actions, many of which have been in the news this week.  But God is the judge of who is in the Kingdom of God and who is not.  The Psalmist describes  the God who makes this decision with these words: "Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar....Search me out, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my restless thoughts."  This is the God who will separate the wheat from the weeds on the last day.  When the slaves ask the master if he would like them to gather the weeds from the fields, they are told "No, for in gathering the weeds, you would uproot the wheat along with them."  The gospel calls us to live our lives sowing good seed and leaving the weeding to God.                

    Amen.  

What will happen next?

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
July 13, 2014

Christmas in July

My favorite Christmas in July story comes from the year Bishop Breidenthal celebrated this feast day with us.  He and I were standing at the back of the church, near the font, listening to the prelude when someone walked up to me and asked what he should do with the bag he was holding, which clearly contained socks and underwear for the baby Jesus.  Without really thinking, but in full earshot of the Bishop, I said "You can put your underwear at the creche at the offertory."  The Bishop's eyebrows raised ever so slightly.  How many priests get to say that in front of the bishop and still be a priest?  Christmas in July is edgy and unexpected, but the underwear we place at the creche is actually about as non-outrageous as an offering can get. What is outrageous is that there are children in this community who are in real need of the socks and underwear we offer this day.  But I think our good Bishop wondered what would happen next in a church that offers underwear at the creche!

Christmas is the great feast of anticipation.  Our readings from scripture are full of hope and anticipation this morning.  Isaiah has just given the Israelites a thorough tongue lashing for their deep unfaithfulness when our reading picks up this morning.  The great kingdom that was established by King David has now split into two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south.  Neither kingdom is very strong and both are tempted to make allegiances with other nations to protect themselves, rather than trust in God, but those allegiances come with a cost.  The people are paying the price as a conquered people who live in a land of deep darkness.  Now, Isaiah promises the people, God will act and bring them out of that land of darkness.   The light will shine on them.  The people  will rejoice, and be free.  A child will be born for them who will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  How will these events come to pass?  The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

Isaiah's words this morning are soaring, full of hope and anticipation. But why should the Israelites believe anything Isaiah says?  What reason do the people have for believing the Lord of Hosts will intervene on their behalf?  The reason is that God has acted in the past.  God parted the Red Sea to delivered the people from slavery in Egypt, led them through the wilderness, and brought them to the Promised Land.  The Israelites all know that story.  Their deliverance from Egypt is the pivotal story of their faith.  If God delivered them once, God will surely act again.  Their knowledge of God's saving act in the past allows them to anticipate God's action in the future.  What will happen next in a world where God can part the Red Sea and lead God's people to freedom?

The Christmas story in Luke's gospel is also full of anticipation as we wait to see what God will do.  We  know Mary is great with child as she sets off with Joseph to go to Bethlehem to be registered.  We remember that the prophet Micah foretold that the long promised ruler would be born in Bethlehem.  Joseph, we are reminded, is from the house of David, also part of the prophecy about the Messiah.  Something spectacular is about to happen, but there is no place for this baby to be born.  Thanks to the hospitality of a stranger, Mary gives birth to Jesus in a stable in Bethlehem, the angels sing, the shepherds visit, and Mary ponders all these things in her heart.  This must be some baby!  What will happen next in a world where the power of God comes into the world as a newborn baby?

"What will happen next?" In a world where God can part the waters to deliver the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt, in a world where God becomes human as a vulnerable baby, what might happen next?  We believe God will act in the future in our own lives because we believe God has acted in the past.  But our trust that God will act in the future is based on something more than simply belief that God acted in the past.  Our trust is based in gratitude-in thanksgiving-for all that God has done.  We are people of thanksgiving.  Every Sunday, week in and week out, we gather at this table to give thanks, to make our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in the Eucharist, a word that means thanksgiving.  We give thanks for God's mighty acts through out history and in our own lives.

During my sabbatical, one of the things I realized as I traveled around and visited other churches is how easily we can take for granted all that God has given us at Christ Church.  From our beautiful, well-maintained building, to our children who are deeply engaged in the life of this parish and budding theologians in their own right, to financial resources that allow us to engage in ministries beyond our own means, to parish leaders who step forward and make a whole host of ministries happen, to the joy with which we greet each other on Sunday morning, we are richly blessed here.  I speak only for myself, but I know I am not the best steward of the things I take for granted.  Perhaps that is true of others of us as well.

We are in a time of great excitement and anticipation at Christ Church as we engage each other in conversation about new ministry initiatives.  We know that God will act because God has acted before, both in the story of scripture as well as in our own lives and in our life together as a congregation.  I invite us to be equally engaged in a time of thanksgiving.  In your announcements today and each Sunday through the rest of the summer, you will find a small form inviting you to thank a fellow parishioner for some act of kindness, large or small.  Gratitude is a developed discipline, and I invite us to develop that discipline and let gratitude transform us as we watch for the ways God acts in our lives through each other.

Christmas in July is our somewhat uncomfortable but always joyous reminder us to watch for the ways that God is acting in our midst- all the time.  Christmas in July calls us to live in gratitude for all that God has done for us, and to live in anticipation of what God is about to do.  What will happen next in a church where people offer underwear at the creche, where people anticipate the Christ child's birth in July and all year long, where people live in deep gratitude for all God has done for them and where people see the Christ child in each other and in all people?  What will happen next?
Amen.

True Freedom

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
July 6, 2014

9 Proper A

When my sister Sarah and I were little girls, our aunt lived in a house with a small apartment in the back.  Every summer, we would go visit our aunt and our grandmother in Headland, Alabama, and if no one was living in the apartment at the time, which was usually the case, my sister and I had a full scale play house. We would spend hours imagining everything we could do if we actually lived there, on our own, at the tender young ages of 8 and 9. We could come and go as we pleased, do what we wanted, when we wanted, and in general live what we considered, at that age, to be a life of perfect freedom.  Never mind that, in Headland, Alabama in the 1960's, everyone knew everyone else and their business, so there was really no such thing as perfect freedom. Never mind that we had no visible means of support or that, short of making the bed, we had no real domestic skills.  We just wanted the freedom we thought grown ups had and were utterly oblivious to any cost or obligation that came with independence.

Independence and freedom are the theme song of the 4th of July.  In the secular world, freedom and independence tend to be primarily individual values, whether those of an individual person or an individual nation.  We value individual freedom to make choices and to live with consequences.  We think of an independent person as someone who has to rely on no one, an independent nation as one that is neither dependent on any other nation nor subject to any foreign power.  We think of freedom as the right to do what we want, when we want, to worship when and where we want, to spend our hard earned money however we want.  We admire the person who has pulled him or herself up by the bootstraps, so to speak, and lived the American dream, rising from poverty to great success.  And rightly so.  These are all admirable qualities.  On the 4th of July, we celebrate our freedom and independence as a nation.  We give thanks for the men and women who have given their lives on behalf of that freedom and independence, and we are called to work on behalf of those for whom the American dream has not yet come true: those on the margins of society in need of food, shelter, employment, education, and access to medical care, those who cannot pull themselves us by their bootstraps because they have no boots, metaphorical or real.

Given the emphasis of this holiday weekend on freedom and independence, I find it evidence of God's great sense of humor that our gospel lesson is about a yoke.  A yoke, no matter how easy or light, gentle or humble, is still a yoke that, by definition, binds someone or something to someone or something else.  The most common definition of a yoke is  "A crossbar with two U-shaped pieces that encircle the necks of a pair of oxen or other draft animals working together."  According to that definition, a yoke is clearly a symbol of bondage, not freedom, and we recoil, rightly, from that image when applied in any way to any human being.  So, what kind of yoke could Jesus be talking about?

When Rebekah left her family and her home to marry Isaac, without ever having met the man, this hardly looks like freedom to our 21st century eyes, even though Rebekah made that decision herself.  She is binding herself to an unknown person in an unknown land for an unknown life.  Yet in an odd sort of way, her marriage to Isaac frees her to be a part of God's ancient promise to Abraham that he will be the ancestor of a great nation and his descendants will number the stars in the sky.  In the upside down, inside out world of the gospel, where the outsiders are insiders, and the last shall be first, and the poor shall be rich, the binding yoke Jesus offers is actually the yoke of radical freedom.  Jesus' yoke frees us from having to make our way in the world, or into heaven for that matter, all by ourselves.  Jesus' yoke frees us from having to right all the injustices of society, single handedly.  Jesus' yoke frees us from having to figure out how to follow him all by ourselves.   Jesus' yoke is a double yoke, so that we never carry our burdens alone.  Jesus and the whole body of Christ carry those burdens with us.  In Paul's letter to the Galatians, from which we unfortunately do not hear this morning, the apostle tells us to "Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ" and the first letter to the Corinthians tells us that when one member of the body suffers, all suffer with it.  Likewise when one member of the body is honored, all rejoice.  The paradox of the gospel is that Jesus' yoke offers radical freedom as it binds us both to Jesus and to one another, freeing us from having to save ourselves and freeing us to both bear one another's burdens and to work together for the good of the whole human family.

This morning, as we celebrate the independence of our country and our freedom in Christ, Jesus reminds us that true freedom joins us together rather than separates us.  True freedom is not just the freedom to come and go as we please, and do what we want when we want to as my sister and I longed to do all those years ago.  True freedom is the freedom to be the people God created us to be and to do the work God has given us to do.  The message of the gospel is that the yoke of Jesus gives us true freedom as there is no burden anyone must carry alone.
Amen.