July 10, 2005 - Eighth Sunday after Pentecost - Mother Stephanie Parker

FIRST READING: Isaiah 55: 10-13
PSALM: 65: 9-14
SECOND READING: Romans 8: 1-11
GOSPEL: Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23

Today, with this particular Gospel, we enter into this incredible and wonderful part of Matthew's witness in Chapter 13, where we hear the teachings of the Kingdom - the parables of the Kingdom, as told from Jesus' lips, that offer to us two things very clearly: One, they show us and help to try to teach us the way that God moves in the world with God's children, with all of God's people. That is the first thing they do - they reveal how God is with us in the world. And the second thing that they do is actually show us and offer us a way of being in the world - a way of being in the world that reflects not our own limitations or our own brokenness or our own inability to live up to some mark, but a way that very lovingly reflects how God wants us to be in the world, and how Christ shows us very clearly, with all of His life, short though it was, what that looks like, and how it is to be in the world with God.

Now, this is an interesting little Bible study lesson - sort of a Bible study within a sermon. You see, in today's Gospel, it looks like this parable, this first parable and these wonderful teachings, flows basically from Jesus' telling the story into a very wonderful explanation of what that story means. Now, do we often see this in Jesus' parables? Almost never! As a matter of fact, we only see it twice, and so Bible study and looking at the Scriptures closely can tell us two things, that, one, it is very certain that Jesus taught in parables, and that all of these that we have flowed from Jesus' lips. And the second part of what it teaches us is that Jesus wasn't given to explaining the riddles that He shared with us, and it was actually the community of faith in writing the Gospel that shared that explanation with us. It is actually Matthew's sermon on the parable of the good sower, which I love, because Matthew is a pretty good preacher, I think. I would have loved to have just actually done this, and, like last week, sat down and just said, "Well, there it is - the parable explained! No worries".

So, what is the parable? Now, in here you see that it goes from verses 1 through 9, and then from verses 18 through 23. So, what in the world is happening, I wonder, in verses 10 through 17? Well, we see this lovely snapshot. First, we have this amazing image of the crowds being so thick and so big and pressing in on Jesus so much that He actually has to get into a boat and go slightly off-shore in order to be heard by everyone. We see this amazing multitude coming out to hear Jesus' teaching, and then, in those verses that we don't have in our lectionary today, we see Jesus, alone once again with His disciples. His disciples say, "Jesus! Why do you teach in parables? Why do you tell us these stories? Why don't You just tell us, in essence, what You want us to know, or what we need to believe, and then we will just go out and act on that?" But Jesus says, "No, no, no, no! I teach in parables so that people who cannot hear might understand".

So, what Jesus is doing is in the best tradition of wisdom teachers. Now, what a wisdom teacher will do is to keep the mind active and supple, as opposed to having our intellect flow along these channels of thought that are very comfortable - places where we become entrenched, and where we think we know what we see, or where we already have our perspective set, so we don't need a new perspective.

Jesus was battling that. We have seen this in all of His confrontations with the Pharisees in the last several chapters. We see Jesus constantly battling against the status quo. So, what Jesus does, in the wisdom tradition, is to give people a riddle, or, as the Greek philosophers used to say, something, "good to think on". It is to jar us out of our normal places and move us, even if ever so slightly, into a new place of insight and understanding, so that we can see something new, possibly for the first time.

When you think of perspective . . . well, as they say, perspective can be everything. I counsel, so many times, people whose lives are very difficult, and I have this image of them with their face pressed against the wall, with the whole world of God's full abundance spread out behind them, but, because of their perspective, they have no way to see it.

So, Jesus is confronting a people whose perspective has been very narrowed this way, and, not only the people there then, but people now. How many of us get lost in our own perspective? So, here these rich and wonderful teachings come to us - and we are going to be bathed with them in the next several weeks - where Jesus offers us a new way to see things, and a new way to be in the world.

It is just like our mission statement on the front of the bulletin. Now, a mission statement, written on the front of a Church bulletin, can just be words, and we speak them every Sunday, often from memory, by rote; but, what do they mean? They offer us a way of being in the world. So, how is Jesus showing us those two things I mentioned earlier? - God's perspective on God's creation and the children that populate that beautiful earth; and how we are called to be, with one another and in response to God in that creation.

So, we look at this parable of the sower, and what is most incredibly striking about how the Word is sown . . . . and the Word is who? Forget the explanation at the bottom, we are going to go with the Word is the Word made flesh - Jesus Christ, our Lord . . . . so, we see the way that God enters the world through Christ and sows that seed - sows God's love, mercy, and justice in the world. What is a word that comes to mind? I have so many of them, and I am going to start spouting them in a minute - words like extravagance, indiscriminate, without care for outcome - this is the power and the nature of God's true love for us. So many times, we wonder - What is it that God wants from us?

Well, God shows us very clearly, starting with this first parable, that God wants us to understand God as a God of loving abundance - a God so extravagant that God will cast out God's love and God's compassion and God's mercy everywhere and anywhere. We do not see a God who plows a very narrow furrow. We get to hear the parable of the wheat and the weeds. We have a God who casts out God's love everywhere, regardless of where it falls, without any concern for how it comes back, and we already know from Isaiah how that word will come back. Doesn't Isaiah tell us that nothing that God sends out will return to God empty? Even our most annoying and embarrassing failures, as we attempt to be the way of Jesus in the world - even that, God can use. Nothing - nothing that we send forth; nothing that God sends forth; and, certainly, nothing we send forth in God's name - is ever, ever wasted.

But that is hard for us. At least it is hard for me. I know, as I keep walking along, one of the things I always want to do - whenever I am feeling vulnerable, or whenever I am feeling at risk - I always try to predict the outcome. Right? I do the weights and measures. "Well, if I risk myself on this . . . Ahhhh! What if I fall flat on my face? What if I risk making up with my sister, who I am in an argument with, and she rejects me? What if I risk a new ministry at Church, and it is not accepted, and people just aren't ready for it? What if? What if? What if? What if I throw myself out there, and, somehow, I fail, or I stumble, or I fall?" We are always attached to that outcome. It gives us some measure of safety and, my favorite word - control! O.K.?

So God shows us a new way of being in the world and encourages us, and what's more, tells us to have confidence in not counting the costs, not predicting the outcome, and not worrying if it will be accepted or rejected. I know, from Churches in my geographical past, when I would hear this parable, I would always wonder about "Let people with ears listen"; because I got the feeling that our attachment to this Word was to go out and sow the seed, and, if it wasn't received, we should take our plow, verbally beat the ground into submission, and then offer that Word up once again! And I think that's why Episcopalians don't like to evangelize! That is a pretty gritty job description! - One that I don't want, even as a priest in God's Church, and one that I am not up to. But that is not it at all! Jesus shows us clearly that we are simply to live our lives as a reflection of Christ's love in the world - spend all of ourselves with extravagance and abundance, not worrying about the outcome, not counting the costs - and we are safe in that, because, if we fail, even by our own hand, in God's Kingdom, is anything we throw out there in love wasted? No! This is the promise that we have today. This is the glory of where we are.

So, that is our call - our new way of looking at and being in the world. Wherever you are, whatever is holding you up, whatever risks you are averse to taking, grab it with gusto, and, if it falls short, so be it. If it hits its mark, thanks be to God!

So, with that in mind, I want to finish with this beautiful poem that I found, and I am sorry that I don't have an author. I think it was the person who wrote the reflection that I was reading, and I couldn't find it in the work. But this is a beautiful piece of poetry that I think will, hopefully, give us all, as we leave today, something good to think on.

Holy Word, cast abroad, shattering on rock;
spraying knowledge in sparking arcs;
Word, quietly burrowing deeper and deeper,
until water and darkness break you open into wisdom;
wisdom profuse and ripe.

In the Name of God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

AMEN