Sunday September 25

nb: with a big shout-out to Kevin over at The Word Proclaimed. I use a story he tells as a example today. I remembered hearing the original sermon when he preached it. If you want to learn from a master, go check him out.

So, over the past year or so, you’ve probably gotten used to me asking the question during my messages each Sunday – what do you think about the gospel lesson that is read?

And today, Jesus asks the same question of the educated Pharisees – what do you think? They’ve been pestering him with questions, trying to trick or trap him into committing blasphemy by equating himself with God, or saying that he’s the messiah – really, they’ll take anything as an admission of guilt. The thing is, they know the right answers to their questions.

One of the problems of the Pharisees is that they took God’s truth and boiled it down to a series of legalistic requirements. Have a religious question? They have an answer to it. Have a question that stretches the boundaries of what they know is their good doctrine? Not happening. The problem isn’t their doctrine, they believe – in that case, the problem is asking a question that doesn’t fit the answers they have.

They want to know by what authority Jesus does the things he does. His way of interacting – or acting – with God is foreign to their way of thinking. So they want to trap him outright in an admission that he is wrong.

So Jesus asks them a question designed to make them think – did John’s baptism come from heaven, or was it of human origin? We’re given a glimpse into their thought process – if we say, ‘from heaven,’ he’ll say, then why don’t you believe him; but if we say ‘of human origin,’ this crowd will tear us apart because they believed he was a prophet”.

So, they’re pretty shrewd thinkers. Politically astute, we might say. But they’re unwilling to open their thinking to something that might change their minds about what they believe. But Jesus comes to shake their nicely laid-out faith to its foundations.

I’ve said before that faith isn’t about getting the right answers, but about learning good questions. Jesus is a master question-asker, and his questions stretch the simple answers that the Pharisees and the crowd have come to believe.

In the end, the crowd turns on him, enraged that his questions expose their faith for what it is – hollow dogma, memorized and regulated. It’s a faith that brings great comfort, and self-satisfaction in no small measure, but it can also leave people feeling empty.

And the empty tomb raises still more questions.

A friend of mine tells a story about his time as a pastor in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The week after the US invaded Iraq, a local TV station sent a reporter to his church, looking for a faith-related sound bite for the six o’clock news. My friends’ church had been holding weekly prayer services in the weeks leading up to the war and some reporters had already done pieces on the church.

But this time was different. The reporter who came was known for his confrontational interview style. And as my friend tells the story, it was clear he had an axe to grind.

As my friend tells it, the reporter

“knew that I and most of the congregation were opposed to the war and he tried to get me to say on camera that any Christian who supported the war was going to hell. Saying that high profile Christians were destined for damnation would have sounded great on TV.

I tried to convince him that reconciliation was at the heart of the Christian faith and that was one of the reasons why I opposed the invasion of Iraq. He kept needling me, pushing me, asking leading questions. Frustrated, he turned the question around on me and snapped,

“Where then, is this ‘reconciling God,’ when children are being maimed, lives destroyed, innocent people killed, all in the name of so-called freedom?”

I fumbled around for words, very aware that any bonehead comment I’d make would be broadcast across the country.

The only response I could think of was, “God is present when people suffer unjustly. When a child is maimed, God is maimed; when innocent people die, God shares their death.”

As my friend admitted, he wasn’t entirely satisfied with his answer. And from the disappointed look on the reporter’s face, neither was he. While my friend had offered as thought-out a response as he could in a short period of time, a quick, hard-and-fast condemnation would have made a much better soundbite.

Usually, we only think as much as is needed to form an opinion about something – and then we stop. As with the Pharisees, though, Jesus challenges us on that. So he goes on to tell the story of two brothers.

A fathers asks his two sons to go to work. The first son says ‘no,’ but then goes to the fields. The second son said, “sure I will!” and then didn’t go. Which one did the will of his father?

Now, before you give the short answer, think a little about it. You have two children: you ask them both to do something. One says ‘no’ outright; the other says ‘absolutely!’. You don’t stick around to see the results. Who is doing your will?

What we think about something influences what we do – regardless of what we say. The first son answered honestly when his father asked him to go and work in the vineyard: he didn’t want to. But he changed his thinking and went to work that day. The second son answered dishonestly – he told his father, “yes, I’ll do it!” but then didn’t. His actions showed what he was thinking all along.

Where does our thinking lead us as Christians? Does it stop at the altar: “I’m righteous, so I’m good. I don’t have to change anything, because I’m better than other people”? Or does it extend out into the good Lord’s vineyard – “all right, I have this tremendous gift of salvation from Jesus. What do I do with it now – how do I live in ways that show other people that they can have the same gift?”

The problem with fundamentalism of any persuasion is that it proclaims thinking to be the enemy – fundamentalism accepts no truth other than a narrowly defined legalism. On the opposite end of the spectrum there are people who label themselves as “free thinkers”, who reject religion outright usually in favour of something of their own devising.

What both groups have in common is that they’re the people who urge you to ‘have an open mind’ when confronted with some of their ideas.

But they don’t really want you to have an open mind – they want you to have an empty one - that they can fill with their own ideas.

So God doesn’t call us to give lip service to a prayer and then go home Sunday afternoon to our comfortable chair. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

So we strive to do the work of God who is with us – sharing the message of the gift of the kingdom of God, showing the world how we live – not as people who are burdened and defined by dogma or doctrine, but as a living, thinking people serving a living, thinking God. The doctrine that we learn in Sunday school, confirmation, and through preaching isn’t intended to be the stuff you have faith in; its purpose is to help you define what you believe, and help you to find clearer ways to live out your faith.

And why is it so important that God calls us to be ‘thinking’ people?

Look around you. It’s a nice contrast to the rest of the world.

Let the people of God say amen.

September 18

nb: with a shoutout to David Lose, and an apology to Daniel Erlander for appropriating the idea of God's "manna way."

Think about this question for a bit: the parable of the workers in the vineyard is about ____________________?

There’s lots of good things we can say about it: it’s about love, about God’s fairness, God’s mercy. There are probably as many different interpretations as there are people here today. here are a couple of things that it’s not about: the parable is not about being just, or fair, or working hard for a living and reaping the rewards of a good life.

Some deeply cynical part of me points out that this parable is also about the workers who are in the vineyard. If the kingdom of heaven is like the landowner, then the landowner has to continually deal with people who are a bunch of whiners. So, in another way, the parable of the workers in the vineyard is a story about how we usually feel that we could do a better (or at least more fair) job of running the universe than God can.

On some level that’s true, isn’t it? It was true for the Israelites: they are brought out of slavery – and bear in mind that slavery for the Israelites was something they’d chosen to avoid a famine; it was only after a Pharoah arose who didn’t know Joseph that it became a burden to them. They’d seen the parting of the sea, the great pillar of fire that led them by night, and the cloud by day. They were familiar; intimately familiar with the works of God.

Out in the wilderness, though, it was something else entirely. Out of the familiar confines of Egypt, there arose some problems with management: “you have brought us into this wilderness to kill us with hunger!” What is Moses doing, what is God doing that they are now in the wilderness, with little food?

We know how God provides for the Israelites: he sends quails at night and bread in the morning. This bread, called manna, covers the ground and the Israelites are to take what they need for the day, and nothing more – except on the sixth day, when they are told to gather enough to last them for the Sabbath.

There’s another interesting human factor to the story, as well: it’s what the Israelites call the stuff on the ground: manna. The word manna means…well, it means what they say, the same thing that your children, and mine, say when confronted with the intolerable reality of a Brussels sprout for the first time: “What is this?”

“What is this that you’re trying to feed us?”

“What is this that God is doing?”

“What is this stuff that we’re given?”

What is this? is our reaction to God’s grace in our lives. It doesn’t look like we think it should. It certainly isn’t fair – partly because our gratitude to God’s presence in our lives is always tainted with self-interest: what do we get from God in exchange for being ‘good’ people? But what God gives, thought unexpected, is good, and it is gift, all the same.

The secret of manna is that God gives out what everybody needs – and only what we need. You can’t ‘store up’ God’s grace; you can share it with others, but not store it up. That’s God’s manna way – that grace is more than just a simple prayer before a meal.

We can live out a manna way of our own – because when we know that grace isn’t just a simple prayer; it becomes a way to live.

Yet that way is kind of hard. The manna way doesn’t make sense in our lives – I’ve worked as a manager, and I know that many of you own your own businesses and farms. Look at the parable of the owner of the vineyard: does that make sense?

In a word, no. It makes us ask, what is this? All over again.

But as I often ask you: who are you in this parable? Are you the landowner? (if you think you are, you may have delusions of grandeur).

Are you among the first hired? Or the middle, or the last? Do we really have a ‘heirarchy’ of believers in the faith? I sometimes think we do – certainly, there seems a certain amount of respect accorded to people who have lived in the faith for longer.

Let me share with you something that all those workers have in common, though. Why are they in the marketplace at all? They are there because they are the dregs of their society. They are the people who do not have regular work, do not have a business of their own or a fishing boat, or a plot of land to farm. They are the desperate, the destitute, and maybe even the damned.

And the landowner goes out looking for them. Four times during the day, the landowner goes out seeking them. He doesn’t ask for applications, doesn’t check references, doesn’t interview and then do callbacks. He’s looking for labourers for his vineyard, and not just anyone will do – he needs everyone.

But at the end of the day, he calls those hired last – those who had given up all hope of hire, but who remained because they had literally no where else to go – and gives them the usual daily wage. And those hired first see it, and begin to do some mental arithmetic. This could be the greatest payday they’ve ever seen.

And they receive the exact same pay. One day’s wage. Not a weeks; nor a months; nor a lifetimes; but one day’s wage. And they take it, not as grace, but as insult. Instead of rejoicing at the poor who were helped on that day, they assigned a worth to each group, and they were at the top of the heap.

And as preacher David Lose points out,

Jesus tells [this parable] to illustrate the hardness of heart with which those who deemed themselves righteous considered those who by almost any standards were not, begrudging them the grace and mercy of God and the attention of God's Son. But there's also an existential dimension that speaks as truly to our own day, time, and lives as it ever did to Jesus' original audience. Because this parable lays before each and all of us a choice as clear as can be. When we look at our lives, do we count our blessings or our misfortunes? Do we pay attention to the areas of plenty in our lives or what we perceive we lack? Do we live by gratitude or envy? Do we look to others in solidarity and compassion or see them only as competition? The killer thing about this choice is that it really is a choice as unavoidable as it is simple -- you just can't be grateful and envious at the same time. So which is it going to be?

Jesus is eventually killed precisely because he offers this choice. That is, Jesus is crucified not just because he proclaimed that the grace, and mercy of God was available to all, even to those deemed so incredibly unworthy, but also because his declaration revealed the hardness of heart, the stone-cold entrenchment of spirit, that is part and parcel of the human condition. His boundary-breaking generosity revealed the envy and competitiveness of those in power. His vision of another way of being in the world -- he called it the kingdom of God -- betrayed the lie told by the protectors of the status quo that theirs was the only way. Shamed by such a vision, and unable to embrace it, they put the visionary to death.

Yet God’s manna way continued, as the darkness of death faded to reveal a new bread from heaven broken for all people; fruit of the vine that brings to all people new and everlasting life.

Today is our stewardship Sunday – and maybe I think we need to rename it. In fact, I’m going to suggest it right now: instead of calling this stewardship Sunday, let’s call it ‘celebration Sunday’. Let’s call it “grace Sunday;” let’s call it “manna Sunday.” This is a day when we celebrate that we, who are hired last, who journey through the wilderness, we who are not worthy of the smallest tidbit of the grace of God, are given ALL.

This day is not a day when I’m going to flog you to open your wallets and “give”. This is not a day when we’re going to put a chart and graph, and say “this is where we need to be.” This is not the day when I raise up the ministries of the congregation and ask you to staff them.

I’m not going to do that because I already see your hearts open, and giving. I’m not going to do that because I know that when I tell you at the end of the service to “go in peace and serve the Lord” that you DO that; that you go out into the vineyard and work from sunup to dusk.

I want you to know that this is the morning we wake up and find God’s grace scattered on the ground so that we can live. I want you to celebrate God’s faithfulness and gifts to this community – and I ask you to celebrate the future we share together, because of that faithfulness and gift.

Today we will talk about a new initiative for our congregation’s future; we’ll talk about our hopes and dreams and visions. Most of all, today I want you to talk about you; we have shared in our labours together, and now we rejoice at the end of the day.

And for anyone who doubts that the Church lives like this parable of the workers in the vineyard, that the Church models the landowner who welcomes every labourer and gives to them freely, remember this: even if this is your first day in our home – or even if this is your fifty thousandth – you are welcome to join our celebration.

God has sought you out; you have been brought home. Join us, celebrate with us the great miracle of God’s manna way: that grace isn’t just a simple prayer before meal; that it isn’t a philosophical condition; that it isn’t a theological concept –

Brothers and sisters, grace is a way to live. Be at peace, for you serve the Lord and your reward is certain. Go out and find those who are desperately seeking; look for those who have given up hope. Bring them into the Lord’s vineyard and know that they, too, will receive all that they hope for – and just what they need.

Let the people of God say amen.

September 4 - Pentecost 12A

Did you know that, here in the church, we practice ‘tough love?’ It’s true! Of course, tough love looks different from different perspectives.

I have a friend who left a church that practiced ‘tough love’ – if you did something that the pastor and church leadership thought was wrong, you got a visit from them. At that visit, you were told that you had to repent, but that you were going to be shunned from the community for at least some suitable amount of time before you could come back to church some Sunday and in front of the entire congregation confess the sin that had been pointed out to you and symbolically ask the forgiveness of Jesus. The pastor and elders of the church would confer, and after some uncomfortable silence would usually let you back in, noting at the same time that they were being lenient – lenient -- out of Christian love.

That was their tough love. But is that really the love that Paul talks about? “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” As Paul writes – and he echoes the words of Jesus and other, even more well-respected Jewish rabbis – that the commandments are summed up in the words “love your neighbour as yourself.”

And that seems really, really, easy. In fact, some aspect of that is usually cited by people who describe themselves as ‘I’m-not-religious-I’m-spiritual’. If we’re not religious, but we’re spiritual, we can tell ourselves that ‘I love my neighbour as myself, so I must be good, then.” And honestly, that seems a lot easier of a way to live. It’s easier simply because then I can choose who my neighbour is.

But the difference between being spiritual and being religious is that when your are religious, you don’t get to pick and chose things based on how uncomfortable they make you.

You may find your neighbour in the homeless woman who sits outside of Safeway and asks for change,

You may find your neighbour in the person of little education but strong opinion who comes to talk with you because you’re “good church-going folk.”

You may find your neighbour in the young unmarried couple next door when they come over to ask if they can borrow some milk. They need to borrow the milk because he got laid off because of a DUI (which was SO not his fault), and they can’t get to the store to buy food for their kids. They become your neighbour when you load them down with food from your pantry, and grit your teeth instead of pointing out the huge party they had last week.

When you’re Christian, your neighbours choose you. And then you find what ‘tough love’ is really about.

It’s about loving when you really don’t want to. And finding that love and forgiveness are really, really, hard pills to swallow.

Today Jesus talks about what to do when your brother or sister ‘sins’ against you. It’s interesting that Jesus uses that word; in Greek, the word means “to miss the mark.” So, when someone else ‘misses the mark’ with you, Jesus provides a means of recourse. At first reading, it seems to be the kind of ‘tough love’ that we understand.

But think very carefully about what Jesus is actually saying in this text when he says’ “let such a one be to you as a tax collector and a Gentile”.

In classes at Seminary, I was always up for a good argument – I mean, class discussion. If a professor wanted someone to throw something out for the class to chew on, I was often the first to open my mouth.

One day, we were talking about this text, and how we are provided with this model in Matthew 18. I tossed out the example of the church that my friend attended, and then said that, apparently, it was after all ‘biblically sound.”

And my professor looked at me and said, “really? That’s biblically sound? Then answer me this: who wrote this gospel?”

And I said, “Matthew.”

And she said back to me, “and what did he do?”

I said: “he was a disciple.” “And what was his profession?” “He was…a tax collector.”

And she reminded me of the gospel story of a few weeks ago, of the woman who came to beg Jesus that her daughter would be healed. “Where was she from?” my teacher asked. And the light slowly dawned as I said, “she was a gentile.”

That was the beginning of my realization that ‘bible study’ meant more than just memorizing dogmatic answers to tradition texts. ‘Bible study’ means letting the text speak to its own understanding, not the meaning we want.

Jesus says, ‘and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

Bring them into your community and love them. Bind them to the love of God in Christ, and they will be bound in heaven. Loose them, and you will lose them.

Now that’s ‘tough love’.

I’ve said before that I think there was unity in the church for maybe fifteen minutes at the foot of the cross. Conflict is natural in any situation where culture, values, and mixed experiences are present, and Jesus knew that. There are a couple of stories in the gospels that begin “now the disciples argued among themselves…”

If you live by the law, your entire life will be lost, because the Law is hungry: it’s easy, really easy, to point out the flaws and sins of everyone around you. You can, in fact, make a church around that kind of idea. But Paul reminds us to live by love: love that poured out for us in the cross of Jesus Christ.

Being Christian means acknowledging that Christ died for your sins: but honestly being Lutheran means admitting you drove the nails in, while at the same time Christ says to you: Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

Tough love is not destroying someone utterly so that we can feel righteous in ourselves.

Tough love means loving the unlovable – and maybe even admitting that that includes ourselves. Paul reminds us, “salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers,” possibly because when we come to understand and know the love that Christ has for us we can come to understand a bit better what it means to both be saved from and saved for.

Saved from death, and sin.

Freed for love, for community – because Jesus never, ever, uses an example of just one person. Where two or three are gathered, there will always be conflict. Yet it’s funny that it’s in this place that Jesus also promises us, “I am with you.”

Maybe that’s because Jesus knows that we will always sin – we will always ‘miss the mark’. We will always fall short as a community because, well, we’re not Jesus – but we bear his name to the world, despite our failing, despite our sins. And then, together, we move forward as a community of two, or three, or thirty, or three hundred, knowing that as we are gathered in the name of Jesus Christ here is here among us, that we owe each other nothing, other than to love one another, as Christ first loved us.

And there is nothing that can ever separate us from that love.

Let the people of God say ‘amen.’

July 24, 2011

A seed. Yeast. A hidden treasure. A pearl. A net full of fish. These are the things to which Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven.

Really? That’s the best that Jesus can do? And then we find that the disciples do, in fact, on occasion, lie to Jesus: do you understand this? He asks. Er….yes? So he gives them another: “every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

I’m going to let you ponder that. So, as far as Jesus says today, if you think you understand what he’s said, it’s as simple as going through your treasure (whatever that may be) and separating it into two piles: old, and new.

Then what, Jesus? Where’s the punchline? Should we not keep what is old? The next time I visit my mother, should the 300-year-old cut crystal Macintyre christening bowl be given to my children?

Because the truth is, our treasure is both ‘old’ and ‘new’. Even the ways we interpret the treasure of Scripture: we find joy in Paul’s passages about the love of God poured out for us in Christ, but widely disregard the number of things that are labelled as ‘abominations’ by the various writers of the books: eating with Egyptians, leftovers, eagles, inaccurate weights and measures…the list is long. Jesus eats on the Sabbath, eats with sinners, looks for the lost…his treasure, too, is both ‘old’ and ‘new’.

So maybe that’s why Jesus picks such a diverse group of things to which he can compare the kingdom of heaven: old and new, small and big; unlikely things are made precious when God is involved. What’s most interesting about these little parables: Jesus makes it clear that the kingdom of heaven is NOT someplace we go when we die. He’s not telling a story about the halls of Asgard or Olympus or Hogwarts; no, he’s using fairly worldly examples.

I remember coordinating a VBS one summer when one volunteer came to me. “I have a problem,” He said. Anticipating any number of things, I went running back with him to his area. There he unveiled his problem to me: it’s not big enough! I need to find another, a better one! It’s got to be bigger!

Do you wonder what his crisis was? It was simple: he’d looked for a picture of a mustard tree, and had found one. To his dismay, he found that this ‘mightiest of trees’ was about three and a half feet high. He was trying to trace it onto the wall of his room, but had found the picture too puny. He was expecting a redwood; not a shrub.

And I remember the first time I thought I’d help my mother and make bread while she was out getting groceries. I put all the ingredients together, but one thing didn’t make sense: 8 cups of flour and one freaking tablespoon of yeast? Had to be a mistake. So I used 1 cup of yeast.

We never did get the dough out of the cupboard, and that house probably still smells like a distillery.

Something so small that we overlook its significance – that’s the kingdom of heaven.

And then there are the people Jesus talks about: a treasure-hunter, a merchant, a fisherman. Are we them? Are they us? I don’t know. I don’t think so.

I think Jesus uses those stories to show us just how passionate God is about seeking us and finding us. Think of God grubbing through the dirt and mud of a world in search of us, finding us, and then running out and buying that entire world just to make us his own.

Or God as the merchant of fine pearls, seeking high and low. And finding one pearl of great value, rushing out sell all that God has to redeem it.

Or God as the fisherman, bringing up the great harvest of ourselves, patiently winnowing through us until he has cast all that is empty and dead and sinful away and has left only what is good and right and perfect; only what is mindful of God’s Son.

I think Jesus tells us stories about the kingdom of heaven so that we stop thinking of it in terms of something we can sneak into if we’re good enough, and instead start living like it’s right here, within, and amongst us – as he says later in the gospel of Luke, chapter 12.

Today, we get a sneak peak of that, as Gabriel Micha is brought by God into the kingdom of heaven through the sacrament of holy baptism. Gabriel is born into this world; a world that doesn’t work the way it should – a world of sin and death. But today, he is becomes part of much larger story, a story were trees and bushes mean that God loves him more than life itself; that God was willing to die so that little Gabe can live forever.

And today Gabriel joins a rather exclusive family, too – a family of pearls, of great treasure that has been uncovered - as everybody here today on this great occasion is caught in the great net of God’s love. Because – and I’m sorry if I didn’t make this clear when we did baptism prep together – today Gabe is caught. Caught in the love of God, who through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus -- purchased the world.

And as the apostle Paul promised, and he saw in his world how people quickly corrupted the gospel of Jesus, and then how those who believed were persecuted – if God is for Gabriel – if God is for us – then who can stand against us?

Nobody. Nobody is a better seeker than God, nobody is a better fisher. And what’s better – what’s even more important than that – is that God is a keeper. For he keeps what is his. In our baptism, we become the pearls of great price that are purchased at such a high cost, as God gave himself so that we may be become members of his body; and nothing can separate us from that grace and love of God in Jesus Christ.

I am convinced of that: neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Let the people of God say amen.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

The prophet Isaiah recounts the words of God, who made heaven and earth:

¹⁰For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

and do not return there until they have watered the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

¹¹so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

That’s pretty heavy, isn’t it? I mean, ALL of what God wants to accomplish with the Word is going to be done? That’s a loaded theological statement. What about the bad things in the world, then? Does God want those things to happen? How do we reconcile our claims of a just and righteous God with a world that seems, at times, beholden to the merest whim of fate?

Perhaps the secret lies in big rocks.

I come from southern Alberta, and not far from where I grew up is the site of Big Rock – the tremendous glacial erratic that was deposited by a glacier some 10 000 years ago. If you’ve been there, you’ve seen that the rock has been split in two.

What you’ve maybe not seen, though, is the lichen and other growing things that cover some of the smaller pieces of the rock, breaking them down into smaller and smaller pieces.

One little seed of grass or moss can bring the largest mountain crashing down, simply wearing down hardness with eons of stretching, and growth.

Something living overcoming something of stone: cold, and dead.

That’s what a seed can do.

Today, Jesus sits down with his friends and tells them about the way God relates to them, but in a puzzling way. Speaking to a group of fishermen, he uses a farming analogy. But it’s probably harder to be a farmer than a fisherman.

(I hope there’s nobody from either coast here today).

So he tells them a parable: a sower went out to sow. And some seed he threw on the rocky ground, some among the thorns, other seed he threw on the path, and still more he threw on the good soil, which was deep, and rich, and receptive.

Birds ate the seed off the path; the thorns choked out the plants that grew among them; the sprouts in the rocky soil withered under the glare of the sun; but the seed that fell on the good soil returned 30, 60, even a hundredfold of the seed sown.

So I’d like you to think a moment about the field this sower must be standing in: it must be really, really small. It’s got three times as much useless soil as good stuff: there’s a path, rocks, and weeds. In fact, this may be the crappiest field in all of creation. But there’s a small part of it that produces amazing results.

Which is a good thing, because that sower really stinks at his job.

In the time that Jesus lived, seeds were a precious commodity. From every crop you harvested, you washed, cleaned, and kept some of it for next year’s seed. You had to preserve it, so that you had a future. What the sower does in this parable is ludicrous. You don’t waste good seeds on bad ground. How many rocks must there be in this field? How many thorns?

When I was a kid, we had a neighbour who was working on bringing a field of pastureland under cultivation. He was a old-timer, which meant that he didn’t just hook up the 700-horsepower John Deere to the harrow or the plow. Every afternoon, he would go out and spend an hour or two with a wheel barrow, picking rocks.

Well, one summer’s day I’d been working, and a friend of mine called and asked if I wanted to go into the city to see a movie with him and another friend. We did. On the way home, another friend called and invited us to a party. We had time, we were young, we went.

And the next morning I came home with the worst case of the “flu” I had ever had. I was deeply disappointed when I realized that I wouldn’t die; it seemed such a waste of good suffering.

And my mother was, of course, a deeply caring individual, a delicate and godly woman who trusted her youngest son. And seeing him in such deep distress on the one of the hottest days of the summer, she had mercy upon him and sent him out, into the field. To pick rocks.

That is the cleanest field in Vulcan county, I’m proud to say. Sad that nothing will grow in it. But very clean.

The sower in the parable could have learned something. Or maybe we can learn something from that sower.

We can learn to trust.

Are you familiar with the tale of the prodigal son? Well, this is the tale of the prodigal sower. It the tale of God, who casts the seed of his word with incredible abundance, so that it lands in every nook and cranny of our lives and our hearts, so that not one little bit is missed. It is the story of God, who scandalously wastes grace and love on those who don’t deserve it, and yet is ready again to sow when the ground is ready.

And it’s also the tale of the ground of our being; the rock of our hearts and the thorny thickets of our minds.

And the good soil of our souls.

God casts the seed into our lives; and some withers, and dies. We are vulnerable to our own needs and desires, likes and dislikes, sinfulness and self-centredness. But when it finds root in our heart, it grows, breaking down the rock at our core and replacing it with something much, much more alive: something that when it grows, it expands up to a hundred times bigger than the little seed that began it.

And then WE become the seed; breaking down the hard hearts of our world. Withering, dying, and being sown and raised up again by the word of Jesus Christ.

And our lives fulfill their purpose; returning the word of God to where it was spoken, knowing that we are part of the great narrative of God’s creation; word spoken, which creates; word claimed, which heals; word killed, which breaks down; and the Word proclaimed, which gives eternal life.

Our national church meets in convention next week – and it will be contentious. There are issues being debated that have polarized many in the church, but one thing must remain clear: the word of God, once spoken, will not return empty. We are equally sinful; were are all in need of grace.

When it is over, the face of our church may look different; it may look like the face of that Big Rock where I grew up – split, pained, and hard. But still, in that rock, is the seed of life that we proclaim to be the Spirit of the Living God, at work among us, declaring to us that when God has spoken his word will not return empty.

No, it will not return empty. We will return it. With joy, because of what we have first received. With peace, because God is bigger than we are.

And with grace, because our hard hearts have been broken, and only Christ remains.

Let the people of God say ‘amen’.

June 12 - Pentecost/Confirmation Sunday

I would like you to do something for me: if you’re sitting on the end of a pew, I’d like you to lean over, and look at where it rests on the floor. Is it bolted to the floor? I think it is.

It is?

Well, let me tell you a story – not about the pews, not about this church – but about the screws that hold those pews to the floor.

When the Church itself was young – when the presence of Christ was fresh in people’s memory, his breath on them, his ascension, and his promise to come again: it was a wild place.

People came in, shared a meal, shared stories of a church in which the Spirit of God was like a wild thing; it would pick people up and deposit them far from home; it would heal some, restore others, and brought faith to all people. It gave gifts to everyone it touched; gifts of healing, gifts of leadership, gifts of being able speak boldly to authority (for that is what prophecy is – divination is foretelling the future).

When the Holy Spirit moved through the church, it left seats overturned, banners waving, and it drove people out of the door to exclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. Wherever they went, the Holy Spirit went with them; it unsettled people, made a mess out of carefully ordered lives, put to shame the empty religiosity of the Roman gods.

And the church grew. With every baptism of every man, woman, and child, the Holy Spirit was poured out freshly upon the people. And the people who watched were amazed that ordinary men and women could do such things, but most of all they were amazed that those ordinary men and women were so eager to talk about their God and their faith – a task that was normally left to the priests of the temple. And some made fun of them, but even their mocking laughter could not be heard above the joy of the Spirit.

As the church grew, it became necessary for the Spirit to raise up some people as teachers, as securers and guardians of the truth; they were the first people who formed doctrine out of faith. And that was a good thing – because even the Spirit would not prevent humankind from abusing the good news of Jesus Christ; to do so would infringe upon their free will.

But those in the church knew that there is really no free will; our wills are bound to sin. So they trusted completely in Christ, and the Holy Spirit moved among them with power, and the presence of God burned as flames in their hearts.

And then, the church was old, and hundreds of years had passed. The living memory of Christ was lost, and the persecutions began to ease, the Holy Spirit still moved in the church, sending out hundreds of eager men and women, young and old, who shared dreams and brought the vision of God’s redemption to the world. It still left seats and benches overturned, and the simple meal that the community shared reminded them of Christ’s presence in their midst.

And one day, an elder in the church was approached to form a part of a new government; an appointment that would mean respectability, income assurance, and more opportunity for leisure. But, he was told, those who would employ him were uncertain of his religion. It was so messy, they told him, and they worried that the mess and uncertainty that were the hallmarks of the Spirit would be brought into their carefully ordered universe.

So the man went back to his church, and began to speak with the elders there. Not that there was anything wrong with the Holy Spirit, he said, but could we possibly secure the benches to the floor, so that when the Spirit is poured out, they stay upright?

And the elders agreed. After all, it would save on cleaning costs. So the benches (which we call pews) were bolted to the floor in churches all over the world. So it was more…respectable.

And after a while, respectability began to be the reason for the church. And the garments that signified the people of the church – the alb, pristine white for the righteousness of Christ; the stole that marked one as ‘ordained’ to serve the community; and the chasuble, worn to denote the special meal that was shared – became solely the propriety of the minister.

But the Holy Spirit still moved in the church; it was just harder to see. And as the teachings that were necessary to understand God working among the people became emptier and emptier; sacred rites became empty rituals, because the church had become the center of all that was…respectable. As people discarded old ideas of what was respectable, they came to discard the church, as well, seeing only those rituals as what marked one as belonging, as Christian.

So generations were lost. But many stayed; many who had experienced the Holy Spirit in their lives, who had lived – on the surface – quietly boring lives, they stayed in the community and devoted their time, as in the days when the church was young, to the apostles’ teaching, the breaking of bread, and prayer. But the pews remained bolted to the floor.

And they were bolted with traditionalism, ethnocentrism, boredom, and ignorance.

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So, today is Pentecost Sunday, a day when we celebrate the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst, in this church, and it also the day of confirmation, when these 3 young people will take upon themselves the promises made for them by their parents at their baptism.

For those of you who are the parents or perhaps the baptismal sponsors of the confirmands here today – and those who have young children – did you know that you made promises before God to teach your children the Christian faith?

And let me ask you this: have you kept them? Bear in mind, I know the answer to that already.

But I’m not being judgemental; this is a day of celebration! Because today, along with these young people, the whole people of God in this place have a chance to affirm their baptism, and to experience again the presence of God in their lives.

So I urge you today to remember a few things. Just a few:

Remember that what we call ‘church’ isn’t a burden or responsibility; it’s a community, it’s a gift.

Remember this gift is always here for you: school, work, friends, nothing else will be. But wherever you go in this world, anywhere you go in this world, you will find a community who will welcome you into their midst, because you bear the name of ‘Christian’.

And remember, like every gift that is free, just because you don’t pay for it doesn’t mean it’s worthless: it’s priceless. But if you mistreat it, ignore it, or abuse it – well, we’ve already crucified Christ, I don’t expect that we’ll treat his body (which we call the church) any better. Ignore it, mistreat it, or abuse it – we will still love you. But the further you go from our midst, the darker the world around you becomes. Christ is the light of this community. Remember us, for we will remember you, and the Holy Spirit will always go with you.

But also remember that the Holy Spirit in your life does not bring you safety, prosperity, or affluence. It will bring you chaos, uncertainty, and trouble: but it will be chaos, uncertainty, and trouble in the Name of, and in the presence of, Jesus Christ.

And there is no life like it, in this world, or the next.

Remember: Christ chose you. In turn, this day, and on every day that follows – choose a community that actually means something in this world. Not a sports team or a club, but a community of people who will love you for you, wherever you go.

Let the people of God say amen.

June 5, 2011

What’s the oddest thing you’ve ever prayed for? A parking spot? I read somewhere that that is, in fact, the most often-prayed prayer in our culture. God, get me a good spot, somewhere close to the door, but not too close to where the teenagers park… In my experience, though, maybe the most often one comes in times of trouble, often phrased as God, take this away from me and I’ll be a better person. That’s the ‘barter’ prayer, when any and all things are promised if God comes through on his end.

I’ll take a minute to remind us all that the founder of our church – our own Martin Luther – took his monastic vows because he promised God he would if God but let him survive a raging thunderstorm. So, at least there’s a long and good history behind it.

Although those ‘barter’ prayers are common, they’re still not very silly, you know? I mean, I bet even atheists pray for good parking spots. They’re pretty rare.

There was a young preacher in his first parish who decided to make a point of praying always in the Name of Jesus Christ. So every time he prayer, he ended his prayer, “In the Name of Jesus Christ, amen.” Every Sunday, a little boy just sat in the front pew and smiled as he prayed. And that young preacher just thought he was doing the best job he could – he was even reaching the youngest member of the congregation!

After about six months that preacher got a surprise, though. Sitting on his desk on Sunday before church was an envelope, with “pastor” written on it in crayon. He opened it, and to his surprise found a note written in crayon, that said: Dear Pastor, you owe me a hundred dollars. Thanks.

It was from the same boy who sat in the front pew and smiled. After church the preacher stopped the boy and his dad on the way out and asked the little boy about the note. The boy proudly beamed at him and said “well, every time my daddy prays ‘Jesus Christ’ he has to give me a dollar for the swear jar. I think it’s fair if you do, too!”

So, aside from the frequency of the G-D and J-C prayers that we utter, why do we often have such a negative reaction when we’re confronted with prayers for things that we may just not think deserve a prayer?

When I was younger – seventeen or so – I was worshipping with a congregation that had a children’s message after the lessons, and after the message the children were asked if they had anything they wanted to pray for. Usually, they’d tell whichever adult was leading the talk, and then the adult would pray.

Cue me. I’m pretty confident, I grew up in a home where prayer was a relatively common practice. So this one Sunday I asked the children “what would you like to pray for?” and I was met by a sea of big, earnest, brown and blue eyes.

And a little girl stood up and walked over to me. She was holding a teddy bear by its middle, almost cradling it; it was just as cute and cute could be. And she handed that teddy bear to me and said “Teddy has a sore paw. Could you pray for him?”

So prayed for that teddy bear. I prayed that God would be with all small creatures who brought comfort, all friends who sit with us, but most of all, I prayed that Teddy would get over his sore paw.

Well, one of the matriarchs of the congregation took me aside after church that day and did her best to put the fear of – well, her – into me. “You DO NOT pray for stupid things like that bear!” She offered the invocation the next week when we dedicated a new wing that had been built on to the church. And I stood there thinking…why?

It seems that as we grow up we get a list of things in our mind that are good to pray for, especially in church. World peace, health, safety, church growth, church health, church peace…the list goes on and on. Maybe especially as Lutherans, we can get caught up in the language we grow up hearing – the elegant eloquence of the prayers used in the litany of our services.

At the church where I interned, we asked our confirmation students to pray at the beginning of each session, but most often when a student was asked they look at me plaintively and say, “but I don’t know how!”

And they look exasperated at me when I tell them that’s the perfect place to start. The best prayer to pray is one that you don’t know the words for, one that comes out from your heart and past your lips before your brain can tell you it needs to be edited.

Jesus prayed for the disciples, as he prayed on behalf of those who would come to believe in him through their word – he could have prayed those long prayers that are liturgically sound, but instead he prayed from his heart. He prayed for his friends, that they would be kept holy, protected, nurtured, and empowered with his joy.

What kind of prayers do you offer? Do you, as we are encouraged to by James, “pray without ceasing?” Or is prayer something that is done on Sundays, or before meals?

Of course, if it’s a meal at a church people always ask the pastor. After all, we do it so well. But let me tell you something.

As part of our requirements, us intern pastors have to complete a course in Clinical Pastoral Education before our internships. CPE is a hospital or care home internship, where we fulfill the role of student chaplains so we don’t mess up too badly when we get to a parish. It’s a good theory.

But sometimes a better name for it should be “place where young pastors go to get their heads chewed off.”

I interned at St Paul’s Hospital in Saskatoon. After the first couple of months I found myself with full range of the hospital – med units, ICU, emergency, you name it, I was the chaplain-at-large (no pun intended). The first thing I learned was that the Pastoral Care course I took at Seminary didn’t really compare to the real thing. Especially in Palliative or Critical care.

You see, most people don’t go to church, even if they identify themselves as Christian. They usually have the Sunday School faith complex – if I’m good God will heal me – and some, if they’ve been interested at all in the past, may have some inkling of faith. Some take the ‘strong and trusting’ stance, but most people want to pray with a chaplain – and they don’t want wimpy little ‘thy will be done’ prayers; on the whole, the chaplain should be calling down all the hosts of heaven to make them better.

So I waded into it. Out of 200 required clinical hours I filled in close to 300. I prayed holding hands, holding heads. For those who could speak I gave my language to their prayers and for those who couldn’t I gave me voice. By the end of five months I was pretty confident I could pray nearly as good as Jesus.

And having a gift of talking helped, too – no “Jesus wejus’” prayers for me – nope, I was appropriate, formal, comforting, all those things that a good chaplain should be.

And I stopped praying for all those things I thought ‘silly’.

The silence was deafening. Oh, I could still do daily devotions and still pray off the cuff in chapel, but the joy that I had found in prayer was lost.

And then one night in Saskatoon I was putting my eldest son to bed, and we say bedtime prayers. After our little bedtime prayer, I asked him,

“Is there anything you’d like to pray for, son?”

And my little boy held up froggy – a little, stuffed, gangly-legged frog that he was given all the way back when he was born.

Well, I sat on the edge of his bed and I looked at froggy for a long time. And I thought of all the people I knew who needed prayer – Erich, my friend who had been diagnosed with throat cancer, a member of the congregation we attended who had miscarried for the sixth time, a lady I had met at the hospital who couldn’t walk – no words came.

Then I thought of my life, of the promises I have been given, that I have been brought into the truth of the Gospel of Christ, that I am cared for and loved. And I thought of my little boy, whom I prayed for (and still do) daily, and about my wife who was at work so that she could go on Maternity leave when our second child was born.

I prayed for froggy, just as I had prayed for Teddy. Nobody took me aside after I came out of his room. I looked, and there’s no suggested prayer for stuffed frogs in the book of Occasional Services. It probably wasn’t liturgically sound.

It sounds silly, but at that time I found joy in prayer again, praying in the spirit and the unity that was promised so long ago by Christ.

It is very easy to get caught up in the right and proper ways of doing things – and prayer is no exception. Yet it remains a precious gift, one given to us in grace and modeled for us in Christ who prayed for us. When we pray, we are witnessing to the Father and the Son, that they are one and that we are in them – and all our concerns may rest with them and that we may find peace.

Prayer is a gift – the gift given to us by Christ, so that we may be whole and live in relationship with each and with God. It’s a gift to be cherished because, yes, we can pray for those little concerns that niggle at our minds and keep us bothered at night. We can commit those concerns to God and rest knowing we have been heard.

So pray. Pray for each other, pray for the church, pray without ceasing. Praying as a community doesn’t make the hard times disappear, but it can make them bearable, reminded that we are held in God’s love.

Sometimes you need to be careful what you pray for, yes. I read in the news about a small community in Texas that was dominated on one side of town by a fundamentalist Baptist church on one side and a roadhouse bar on the other. The roadhouse was undergoing a renovation that would double its capacity.

And members of the church did what fundamentalists do best: they protested. They promised fire, damnation, and disaster to that bar and its owners.

And the week before the grand opening, the bar was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. The church was very vocal in the community about the role they’d played in that.

So the owners of the roadhouse took them to court, citing that since they were directly responsible for the destruction of the roadhouse, they were responsible for paying out costs of reconstruction.

But the lawyers for the church argued that they had no responsibility whatsoever; it was nature, or accident.

A reported asked the judge presiding what he thought of the case. The judge replied: “I have no clue. On one hand, I have the owners of the bar who believe strongly in the power of prayer; and on the other a church who swears they don’t!”

Become like a children again – in joy, pray for anything, because Christ prays for you. He prays that we would be a community in this place, that we would be one together, as he is with the Father.

Yet remember one thing: ‘grace’ isn’t just a little prayer you say before a meal. It’s a way to live.

Let the people of God say, ‘Amen’.