Sermon: Lessons in sowing (July 13, 2014)

Pentecost 5A/Lectionary 15

July 13, 2014

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

            Now that I am a homeowner, with a little patch of land to call my own, I really wanted a garden. Knowing next to nothing about gardening, I had a more knowledgeable friend come and help me. I was all ready to get my hands dirty and put some plants in the ground, but it turns out, this is only a small part of planting a garden. First, we had to take out the dead stuff that was no longer growing. Then, we had to prepare the soil. We raked all the leaves and debris, pulled out the weeds, cleaned up the edges. Then we put down soil, manure, and some other stuff that she said was supposed to add nutrients to the soil. We mixed it all in. Then, finally, we started digging some holes and planting stuff!

My completed garden!

Then we added fertilizer and watered it like crazy and stood back to admire our work.

            This is how planting works, apparently. First, you plow, or do whatever you need to prepare the soil so that you can be assured that the soil is good, that seeds will do well in it. Who would try to sow seeds on rock hard soil? Or among thorns? It doesn’t make a lick of sense.

            And yet, this is how the sower in today’s parable approaches the task of sowing. Totally reckless, no forethought, no preparation, just tossing seeds here, there and everywhere. And the result? Three quarters of the seeds don’t fall on fertile soil, and are scorched by the sun, or eaten by birds, or choked by thorns. Not much foresight there, Sower. Too bad he didn’t have a more knowledgeable friend helping him like I did!

            I mean we, today – we know how to prepare for things. Businesses do a demographic study of an area before they plant a store there. Church mission starts also study an area, knock on doors, explore needs, before deciding to start a church. You want to have a sense that you are filling a need, serving a purpose… not to mention be successful! This lack of preparation that the sower is guilty of… that wouldn’t fly in today’s world.

Van Gogh, Sower

            Not to mention the recklessness! Throwing seeds willy-nilly. It’s just not responsible. Since I was a kid, I have been so careful about not wasting things, and keeping things in case I might need them later. I remember for one birthday a friend gave me a package of clay with which I could make some pottery, specifically pottery based on Native American designs. It even came with some black paint so I could do designs on the side. Such a cool gift! I was delighted. But every time I looked at the package of clay in my closet, I thought, “No, not today. I might mess up, and then I will have wasted it. I should save it for a time when I am sure I will be able to make something beautiful with it. If I use it now, then I won’t have it anymore, and then I’ll be sad later that I was so reckless to use this before I was really ready to get everything out of it that I could.” See – I was careful, thoughtful, and I thought ahead. Not like this sower in the parable.

            Well, I’d love to say my thoughtfulness, care and foresight served me in the end. But guess what happened to that clay, that lovely, interesting gift from my friend? I kept it – for years, until I was too old to really enjoy it anymore, and then a little longer in case my interest might return… until the clay dried up and became worthless to me. I ended up throwing it in the garbage one day many years later. I never got to enjoy it. *

            How much of life passes us by like that? How many opportunities do we miss because we are afraid of not doing it right, because we are waiting for the perfect opportunity, and want to make sure we are absolutely prepared? How many of us need to make sure the proverbial soil is perfectly tilled before we take any risks and try to make anything grow?

There are many ways to enter this parable. We can think of ourselves as the sower, being sent

Icon, "Jesus the Sower" by
Athanasios Clark

out to spread the good news to others. We can think of ourselves as the seed, that is being spread upon the world. But my favorite way to understand this well-known parable is to think of God as the Sower, and myself as the soil. And I confess to you: I’m not always the good soil. Just as I sometimes miss opportunities to share the good news with others, I have also missed opportunities to let myself hear the good news. My guess is I’m not alone in this. Sometimes it is hard to hear and receive God’s Word, because we have been hardened and burned too many times before, and we’re not in a place to receive good news. Or sometimes we hear it, but quickly let it be choked out by other things that seem more important in the moment. Or we hear it, but ignore it and let it be destroyed by the elements.

It’s a good thing, then, that the sower so recklessly spreads seed, even on the bad, unprepared soil – so that if I miss it the first time, I will still have another chance. This parable, you see – it is a parable of abundance. It is a story about a God who throws seed out to all different kinds of soil – not because God is a bad gardener who doesn’t understand about tilling and fertilizer, but because God knows that all of that seed will do some good. The seed that gets eaten up by birds – at least it is feeding the birds! The seed that gets thrown among thorns – it is fertilizing the soil for future harvest.

And the seed that lands on good soil – that is an abundance beyond our understanding! A good harvest is one that yields between seven and ten-fold. Jesus tells his disciples that the seed that fell on good soil yielded 30 times, 60 times, even 100 times! Surely the farmers in the audience were laughing at his absurdity – it is impossible! But what is impossible with humans is possible with God. Because our God is one of abundance – who throws seeds everywhere without counting the cost, who doesn’t worry that some of those seeds won’t do a bit of good, and some will do good that we didn’t expect; a God who knows that some of those seeds will yield a crop that is lavishly beyond human comprehension. With God, there is always enough.

That story I told about my clay… I think I got that for my 7^th birthday, and it has stuck with me for 24 years since, probably because in some ways I am still that cautious little girl who wants to be sure she has what she needs when she needs it. But I wonder: what if I received God’s abundant grace the same way I received that gift of clay? Admiring God’s grace in its package – bread and wine, water in a font, a baby in a manger, a man on a cross – and understanding what a great gift it is… but never willing to actually delve into it and experience the joy it brings. Unwilling to take it and touch it and use it, lest I use it up and then not have it when I need it. Concerned that I might mess it up if I get too invested in it, and so content to simply admire it from afar. What if that was how we viewed God’s grace?

Thanks be to God, that is not how grace works. Our God, the Sower, is a reckless God of abundance, lavishly spreading grace and love upon the world. Some will receive it with joy, and yield an absurd amount more. Some will not be ready to receive it – yet. But the seed keeps coming. The grace keeps coming. It never runs out, and it is never wasted. It may not make sense to us, but that is how our abundant God does things.

Let us pray… Reckless Sower, you never run out of grace for us, and you never run out of love. Make our hearts good soil, ready to receive your Word, and to share your lavish abundance with the world. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

* Worth noting is that I refer to this story a lot, but this is the first time I have used it in a sermon… and even as I decided to use it, I worried about whether this was really the best sermon to use it for. What if it fits better in a later sermon I’ve yet to conceive? Once I use it, I won’t be able to use it again! I guess in some ways, I’m that same little girl.

Two years later and still going

Two years ago today, on July 9, I had my first irregular mammogram. Calcifications in the left breast. A bunch of scans and biopsies later, we found breast cancer, not where the calcifications were, but in a different area of the same breast, and well, you know the rest of the story. Like so many things, that feels like yesterday, and like ages ago. How far we have come since then! An engagement, a dog, five surgeries, including two mastectomies, a house purchase, and two weddings later, here we are!

Still, on this day, I finally feel inclined to tell another piece of the story that I have kept to myself for a few weeks. I wrote about a month ago about a bunch of scans and tests that I had to follow up other possible longterm side effects of my radiation treatments. When I wrote that, I already knew the results: the neck ultrasound showed that I have two small nodules on my thyroid.

When the doctor shared this news with me, he didn't sound at all worried, so I am trying not to be worried either. These happen all the time, he said, especially in young women, and they are usually benign. And while young women are at higher risk for thyroid cancer than the general population, and I'm at higher risk still because of my radiation history, the risk is overall relatively small. Still, given all this, he is sending me to an endocrinologist (thyroid specialist) for an ultrasound-guided needle aspiration biopsy (the same sort of which I had so many for my breast). The earliest this could be scheduled was July 15 - a month later! I guess that's good, as it shows the lack of urgent concern. Even if this is thyroid cancer, it is very treatable, simply by removing the thyroid (sound familiar?), which would mean taking thyroid replacement therapy for the rest of my life. While I don't love the idea of being dependent on a pill for the rest of my life, there are worse things.

One worse thing that I can think of is going through this while already pregnant. Having to make the decision to put my pregnancy at risk by having surgery, or putting myself at risk by waiting several months to remove a cancer. I guess there is a part of me, then, that hopes this is cancer so I can just have the thyroid out and be done with it and then have worry-free pregnancies. (What a crappy place to be, that this seems like the better option.) Of course a much larger part of me wants it to be nothing and remain nothing, but I haven't had much luck with that particular gamble.

As for how I am doing with all this... I'm annoyed. Not even angry, or scared, just annoyed. As so many people have responded to this news, "Can't you catch a break?" Apparently not. I'm also tired - tired of having to make such Big Decisions about my and my future family's health, when I would so rather be deciding things like what color to paint the nursery (that's not entirely true - picking out paint is the worst). I'm tired of being the cause of concern, of worrying people (which is why I have kept this to myself, lest I worry people unnecessarily). I'm tired of medical hurdles being put in the way of starting a family - and before we've even had a chance to try to start one! I'm tired of follow-ups. I'm tired of needles. I'm tired of surgeries. I'm tired of scars. I'm tired of keeping my chin up. I'm just annoyed by all of this. Compliant, but annoyed. And tired.

If there is any aspect of this that does terrify me, however, it is the proximity of the thyroid to the vocal cords. If something should happen and my voice were damaged... I would be devastated. To not be able to sing to my children. To not be able to sing in Concentus. To not be able to sing hymns. Not to mention - to not be able to preach! What would I do?? I know the risk of this is very, very small, so I try not to go down that road, but I am aware that the road is there.

I've hated not sharing this, so now I am. I process externally (duh), so it has been torture not to be able to blog about what's going on in my heart this past month. Being home on vacation last week helped me feel in a better place about everything, so now that the biopsy is only a week away (and I'm trying not to read into the fact that it is the same week as my first breast biopsy, not to mention my birthday week), I wanted to share, and to solicit your prayers - for me, sure, but mostly for my family. More than anything, I'm tired of putting them through this.

Thanks for reading/listening. I'll of course keep you posted.

Sermon: Freedom is hard, Christ's yoke is easy (July 6, 2014)

Pentecost 4A/Lectionary 14

July 6, 2014

Romans 7:15-25a

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

            In last week’s sermon on Romans, I spoke about what we understand as American freedom and what Paul describes as Christian freedom, and how they relate to each other. When I wrote that sermon, I did not realize that the very next day the Supreme Court would announce their decision on a case that brings those two topics together in a monumental way: owners of for-profit corporations are now able to exercise their religious freedom by refusing to pay for medical care – specifically birth control – which violates their religious convictions. The reaction to this decision has been all over the map. Some Christians are delighted, other Christians are appalled, some atheists are using this as more demonstration that religion is destructive, some are waiting to see just how far-reaching this decision will be… Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested in her dissent about the decision that this would have “startling breadth” as to how we understand the place of religious freedom outlined in our First Amendment, and I’d have to say, for better or for worse, I agree with her.

            Between my sermon last week, this decision on Monday, and of course the celebration of the Fourth of July on Friday, I have continued to think a lot about freedom in the past week. The main thrust of last week’s sermon was that while our American freedom allows us to do, say, and believe whatever we want (though with the understanding that some consequences apply), our Christian freedom compels us to use that ability to serve one another. Christ has taken away the burden of sin, and now we, no longer captive to this sin, are able to freely love and serve God and neighbor.

            Today’s text from Romans, which follows what we heard last week, shows us that, while hopeful, this freedom business is also incredibly difficult – because even as we know what God desires from us, it isn’t so easy to follow through. Paul has spent the first six chapters of Romans outlining the law and how good it is and how much he loves it, but now, in chapter seven, he offers this startling confession: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

            That is the difficulty with freedom, you see. As well-intentioned as we may be, and even as certain as we may be at any given time about the rightness of our decisions, it seems too often that we end up doing the wrong thing. Take an encounter I had this week, for example. My mom and I were talking to a friend, and were sharing some old stories with her, and we mentioned someone we both knew. My mom shared a story about something nasty this person had done to her some years ago. Our friend said, “I shouldn’t gossip but… I had a similar experience! She is really a piece of work!” Oh, how often I say something like that: “I shouldn’t say this… but I’m going to anyway,” because, as Paul says, sin is constantly lurking at the door, just waiting for us in all our freedom to slip up a little bit so that sin can creep in there and take over our better judgment. “I know I shouldn’t, but…” is a constant refrain in our lives.

“I do not understand my own actions,” Paul writes. “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” The first time I heard, really heard these words, I felt an immediate kinship with Paul. He suddenly became a real person to me, not just some writer and scholar from long ago. I realized: he struggled, too. This important man, who wrote so much of what we call the Holy Scriptures – even he struggled with sin, struggled to avoid doing things he knew were the wrong things to do. Turns out, we are all together in this human condition, where we mean well, but end up doing the very thing we know we shouldn’t.

Even as misery enjoys company, though, we cannot stay there – and Paul doesn’t. Just when we start to feel that there is no hope, that our Christian freedom will only get us into trouble because as willing as our hearts may be, our flesh is too darn weak to uphold God’s law… Paul looks outward. “Wretched man that I am!” he exclaims. “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” We are not left on our own. We have the great gift of knowing that Jesus has our backs in this.

I’ve been reading this week a book by Anne Lamott called Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. In one chapter, she reflects on the growth and wisdom she has experienced in her life. She goes on for some pages about everything she has learned and gained through the various trials and stages of her life. She also comments, however, that she is not thrilled with what age and gravity have done to her body. In her wry, raw way, she writes, “Left to my own devices, would I trade all [that I have gained] for firm thighs, fewer wrinkles, a better memory? You bet I would. That is why it’s such a blessing that I am not left to my own devices.” Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

            And this brings us to Jesus’ wonderful words of comfort in our Gospel lesson, which are an assurance that we will never be left to our own devices, left to fend for ourselves, left to always do the right thing with the freedom we have been given, even as sin is lurking close at hand. Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you…” I used to think that taking Jesus’ yoke upon me was something like taking up Jesus’ cross – that is, taking on a burden, perhaps the burden of seeking justice in the world, with us pulling the load and Christ as the

driver. But the thing about a yoke is that it is not for one animal. It is for two, two animals who are bound together to walk side-by-side and be a more powerful team than one can be alone. So when Christ bids us take his yoke upon us, he means that we should come and be yoked with him, bound together side-by-side – so that suddenly our personal burden no longer feels quite so heavy, because it is being borne with Christ. Our freedom, which so often leads us to sin, is no longer our downfall, because we make decisions with Christ by our side, bearing some of the weight.

It is not only our personal burdens that are carried in this way. Under Christ’s yoke, we are prepared to bear the burdens of the world. With our God-given freedom for service, and with the strength of Christ and his yoke on our team, we do the hard work that we are called to do: standing up to the oppressor, seeking justice for the needy, showing mercy and compassion to those who are suffering. The very things that last week St. Paul told us Christian freedom compels us to do, now we are given the promise that we need not bear the burden of those tasks alone.

            Freedom is a wonderful, beautiful thing, a gift that has come to us by the grace of God through Jesus Christ. It can also be a burden, as we don’t always use it wisely, for the building up of others, but rather, we use it for our own self-promotion or self-preservation. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord that we are not left to our own devices in this world, but rather are given the gift of Jesus’ own yoke, and the knowledge of God’s strength in carrying the burden of this world.

            Let us pray… We give you thanks, O Lord, for our freedom. But even more we give you thanks that even in that freedom, we are not left to our own devices, but are always accompanied by the gentle, humble yoke of your Son. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: Christian American Freedom (June 29, 2014)

Pentecost 3A

Romans 6:12-23

            I got a call this week from the Barna Research Group. Barna is a group that does research on the Church and her ministry, following trends in various areas of ministry and how it intersects with culture. This was a call asking if I, as a clergy person, would participate in a survey about religious liberty in America. The questions ranged from what I see as my role as a clergy person regarding

religious freedom, to how I see various hot button issues as affecting religious liberty, to where I think my congregation stands on those issues, to how all this affects my preaching… It was quite comprehensive. Of course it is difficult to participate in a survey like this, because you have to offer yes or no answers to questions about a topic that is so very gray. The very first question was, “Would you say we are living in a post-Christian world?” Unwilling to answer yes or no, I started asking questions. “Well what do you mean by post-Christian? Do you mean post-Christiandom? Because in that case, yes. But if you’re asking if I still think that Christian values, or at least what people call Christian values, shape our government and the behaviors of our citizens, well then that’s a different question.” He paused, and simply repeated the question as before. And that’s sort of how the whole survey went!

            Maybe the reason I struggled so much with the black-and-white-ness of the survey is that “freedom” means so many different things to me, and maybe, to all of us. I think the survey was coming from the direction of the religious freedom articulated in the First Amendment of our Constitution – an oft-cited but also frequently misunderstood and even misused ideal. Generally in America, we value our freedom pretty deeply – especially at this time of year, as we prepare to celebrate those freedoms on Independence Day this Friday. For Americans, freedom comes to be something meaning, “We can do what we want, say what we want, believe what we want, and we don’t need to be obedient to anyone or anything we don’t want to.” And we prickle at anything that threatens what we perceive as our freedom.

            Of course, this can have disastrous consequences when we let it go to our heads. Think of the very public political figures who have been brought down by their power and perceived ability to do whatever they want and get away with it, whether that is sexual misconduct, or lying, or causing any number of other scandals. While this is extreme, I think all of us are susceptible to letting our perceived freedom go to our heads, especially when it causes us to focus primarily on ourselves, and not on the needs of others.

            So then there is Christian freedom, and that is something altogether different. It’s what Paul talks about in our second lesson today – though I know that may not have been entirely clear. Paul’s letter to the Romans, while important and wonderful, is not really light, easy summer reading! So let’s break it down. Paul writes, “Do not let sin have dominion over your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions…” In other words, don’t just do whatever you want, whenever and however you want, just because that is what you want. Don’t be slaves to your various passions. Because, he goes on, “You have been set free from sin, having instead become slaves of righteousness.”

But wait – I thought we were talking about Christian freedom here? What is this “slaves of righteousness” business? How can you be free but still be a slave to anything? Ah, you see there’s the rub. Paul’s point is that we are never entirely free; we are always slaves to something. Don’t believe me? How many of you feel naked if you don’t have your cell phone within reach? How many of you feel “off” all day if you don’t practice some version of your morning routine? How many of you love a certain food so much that you cannot curb the craving? How many of you care a little more about money than you probably really ought to?

You see, it’s not a matter of whether you will follow a certain master, but rather, which master you will follow. And Paul urges, when we are deciding which master to be a slave to, choose to be a slave to righteousness. Goodness. Service. Love.

As Michael and I near our one year anniversary, I have been reading a lot of essays and articles about “how to make your marriage last.” It’s never too early, I figure! One included the wonderful piece of advice to always outdo each other in showing kindness. That’s actually pretty similar to what Paul says at the end of his letter to the Romans (which, incidentally, was the passage read at our wedding). He says: “Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.” It’s a good rule to live by, a competition I can get on board with (who can be the most genuinely kind, more of the time?) – but it is, still, a rule, a mantra to which we need be obedient. It is one we can choose to follow, but it is, no matter how you spin it, something to which to be obedient.

So there is freedom here. There is the freedom to choose righteousness and loving service over

things that would cause destruction – either of ourselves or of the people and the world around us. What we need, then, is the power to choose, with that freedom, obedience to righteousness, rather than obedience to our earthly whims and desires. The source of this power, of course, is the promise inherent in the resurrection – that our sins were nailed to that cross and were buried and forgiven and no longer hold us captive thanks to the work of God through Jesus Christ.

But that’s a lot of church talk that doesn’t always make sense to us on a day-to-day basis. So we have these other ways that this power is apparent to us.

First of all, there is our baptism. We will have the chance to witness this wonderful event in a moment: it is the moment when God reaches down to bless a child, claim her as His own, and forgive her all her sins not because of what she has done or achieved, but because of who God is, and what God has done. The Holy Spirit will come into her and stay there, and she will be sealed with the cross of Christ and the promise of forgiveness forever. So when it comes time to make a decision to obey righteousness or to obey sinful desires, we can remember, “Hey, I’m baptized! God thinks I’m good enough to love and claim as His own, so I’m going to do what I can to live into that identity and that hope.”

Second, we have the Christian community. When Cecelia is baptized today, a part of the rite is that I will ask the congregation if they will pray for her and uphold her in her Christian life. That is a promise we make not only to the newly baptized, but to every member of the Christian community – indeed to every neighbor in need of love. Within the Christian community, we do that through prayer, through hearing and digesting the Word of God, through practicing the sacraments together, and through every act of service, whether that is as grand as building someone a house, or as small as giving someone a glass of water.

And finally, we have prayer in the Holy Spirit. A couple weeks ago we celebrated Pentecost, the day the Holy Spirit came down like a rush of violent wind and rested on the church. Through that Holy Spirit, we pray: for ourselves, for each other, through difficult decisions, through challenges and joys, through all things in our lives as individuals and together. In the Holy Spirit, we are given the freedom to pray, and that is what we do.

The freedom to choose obedience to righteousness is still not always easy, brothers and sisters in Christ. The power of the many other things that would demand our allegiance and attention can certainly get the better of us. But thanks be to God that we do have one another, and the promise of a God who is Emmanuel, God with us, in every decision that we make.

            Let us prayer… Boundless God, you have given us a most wonderful gift in our freedom from sin and death, and our freedom for the service of others. Be with us in the many decisions we face every day, that we would always choose what is right. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.