What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, July 31, 2011

Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
Isaiah 55:1-5 • Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21 • Romans 9:1-5 • Matthew 14:13-21

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves." Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish. And he said, "Bring them here to me." Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Jesus was tired. He was grieving. He was ready to get away. Before we get to the beginning of this story of Jesus and the disciples feeding the multitudes, it is so easy to forget that he had no intention of wanting to heal, pray for or feed anyone. He had just heard that his mentor, his cousin, his friend, John the Baptist, had been beheaded, and his head had been served on a platter to King Herod. He was gone. Like anyone who has lost a love one knows, all one wants to do is get away. This was supposed to be Jesus’ time to recharge the batteries.

But that isn’t what he finds when he gets to the shore of the other side of the lake. Instead of a deserted place to retreat--to take a summer vacation--he finds thousands of people who are in great need of every kind. Some are sick; others are possessed by demons; some just are completely confused and lost, without direction.

Jesus could have said to them, “No, I’m sorry, people. I need to take a break folks. I can’t help you right now. I just lost my best friend.” Even though his tank is on empty, Jesus turns away from his desire to flee, and embraces them. What he has to offer is not much: laying a hand on a shoulder, offering a prayer, sitting with the outcast, talking with the people. But it is enough. It would have been the intelligent and logical choice for Jesus to get away and think for a while about what he would do next...to do a little “strategic planning” for the next phase of his ministry. But instead he does the illogical thing, and meets the hunger of the crowd with compassion.

When Jesus has come to the end of that day, all these people are still there, and although their spirits have been met with such compassion, their bodies cry out with pangs of hunger. The disciples demand Jesus to do something: send these people away, so they could at least go home and eat some leftovers, or make it to the shops where they could buy something to eat. It’s almost as if the disciples are in the same place that Jesus had been in on his way to the shore: they just want to get away. All they can see is scarcity. “There isn’t enough, Jesus.”

Which makes it all the more amazing what Jesus says to them, and to us: “You. You give them something to eat!” But the disciples are still in the place boat Jesus was in just as he arrived with all the people here: We don’t have enough. We’re empty. We’re spent. What can we possibly feed them with? They buy in to the belief that there is not enough to go around. “You give them something to eat,” Jesus says. They don’t believe they have anything to give. But Jesus insists they do, and wouldn’t you know, the little that they do have turns out to be more than enough.

The miracle of this story turns out to be not that Jesus turned five loaves and two fish into enough to feed a crowd the size of what would have been one of the largest cities of that day. The miracle is that Jesus believes we have been given enough to feed those who are hungry. We tend to think that Jesus does everything in this story: that he breaks the bread, that he multiplies the fish, that he feeds the crowd. But in Matthew, it’s the disciples who distribute the meal. They give them something to eat.

This is the good news for us this day, dear friends in Christ. As tired, empty and scarce as our emotional, spiritual, or physical reservoirs may ever get...Jesus can take even what little we have, and turn it into an abundance that freely feeds us and a starving world. Jesus has the audacity not just to keep from withdrawing amidst his grief, but also to transform the disciples from being receptors of his compassion, to agents of his compassion. He cannot feed the multitudes without us. Jesus declares us such agents too--that whatever we have to give, as long as we give it freely, it will be enough to share and feed all who hunger for his abundant love.

In the late 1980’s the film Babette’s Feast famously portrayed a meal that displays an agent of abundance—the kind that Jesus makes us into. Babette is a French refugee who has been taken as a cook by two Danish daughters of a pietist pastor. At the end of the film, when she wins the lottery, Babette decides to spend every bit of it--all that she has to her name--on a lavish meal for this family and their friends, complete with exquisite dishes like turtle soup, fine wine and rare morel mushrooms. Little do they know that she is actually one of the finest chefs in France.

After the film came out, many restaurants incredibly tried to cash in on the movie’s popularity by offering a high-priced meal similar to the menu of the one depicted in the movie. But unlike the film, and unlike the feeding of the 5,000, this meal did not come without a price. As one commentator notes, “It would truly be the feast [from the film] only if you couldn’t afford it, if someone paid all they had for [you to have it], and if it was given to you and to others.” (Lathrop) That is the freely given abundance of God that Jesus makes visible in the feeding of the 5,000. We are the distributors of this abundance, because as freely as Jesus has made us his agents, we can give away ourselves, our time, our possessions--signs of God’s gracious love...love that we offer as Jesus did, as Babette did: freely, “without a price”. (Is. 55:1)

Right now a place that is dying to receive that freely given abundance is the horn of Africa, where drought and famine threatens the lives of more than 11 million in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti. The worst drought in 60 years is getting little press coverage. Yet here is one place where Jesus challenges us that there enough supply to meet demand: “You, give them something to eat.” It is not that there is not enough food in the world to feed places like this; it is a question of how to change the unjust systems of distribution so that we can live out our calling as agents to feed the hungry. (You can respond by going to the ELCA Disaster Response Website at elca.org/disaster)

I have heard it said that this story of Jesus and the disciples feeding the multitudes as an allegory for small churches like United Lutheran. In America so often we think that the mega churches are the ones that are “successful”. But the overwhelming majority of churches, at least 75% or 80%, worship under 150 people a week. In small churches it can seem like that situation Jesus encountered on the hill: so many needs, and so few resources. But what makes life in a small church so meaningful and such a blessing, is that even though we may have so little to give, we give it and we let Jesus bless it. We feed each other and the world with our gifts, our time, our resources...whatever it is that we have to give. And Jesus has a funny way of blessing that little bit--those five loaves and two fish--into more than enough.

What do we come today wanting to run away from? What is making us run on empty? As we receive Jesus in our open hands again today at his table, we receive the little we need to feed us and fill us with God's abundance. Jesus is still saying to us, “You, go and give them something to eat.” God has given what we need. God’s work is still calling forth something from our hands. Now it is our turn to go and take part in God making it enough for all. Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, July 10, 2011

Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
Isaiah 55:10-13 • Psalm 65:(1-8), 9-13 • Romans 8:1-11 • Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: "Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen! … Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty."

Jesus liked to tell stories. They actually were a specific kind of story: a parable. I don’t know about you but as a child I was fascinated by stories. No matter how old I was or what else I was doing, when the teacher called for story time, I would stop everything to go and get on the mat to hear a book read. During silent reading time I would sit at my desk and it was as if I entered into a whole other world—of Narnia, of a different part of the country, or of another galaxy. Now today, my passion for stories has gone to some extent into films. I have no doubt that one of the main reasons why movies continue to be so popular in our culture is that they are one of the primary vehicles for stories to continue to be told. Stories have a way of feeding us, and we will always hunger and thirst them.

For several years now there has been a resurgence in academia scholarship about the power that stories have in giving meaning to our lives. More than any principle, dogma or doctrine, stories have the power to shape our lives, give them purpose, and to construct reality for us more than anything else. Not only do stories have the power for us to make sense of our lives, but also to make sense of our faith. It’s no wonder then that Jesus liked to tell stories. In telling them he gives us glimpses of God’s story of gospel love—love that draws us in because God always has a place for us in God’s unfolding plot line.

Jesus doesn’t tell any old stories. He tells parables. We’ll be hearing many of his parables in the lectionary readings from Matthew’s Gospel for the next several weeks. Parables are very short—they don’t belong in the “short story” bookshelf at the library. They are allegorical. They cannot be understood unless we understand who is speaking them. Jesus’ parables have a subversive power because the meaning in them isn’t obvious—it’s concealed. They have a hidden purpose of de-legitimizing whatever tries to keep us out of the story of God’s gospel love.

Jesus’ parable story we hear today is one that to us human beings do not make any sense, and does not seem to have a place in it for us. A sower goes and sows seed, planting it on all different kinds of ground: a hard packed path, rocky ground, thorny ground, and good fertile ground. When we picture a farmer going out to plant crops today, we picture a farmer doing all he can to make the soil good before he goes out to plant and maximize his crop. But the sower in Jesus’ parable scatters seed down on the ground regardless of whether there are rocks there or not; regardless of whether the ground is tilled or not; regardless of whether the soil has any barriers that would keep growth from happening.

What kind of sower is this? Is this a fantasy? Is Jesus crazy? Does he not see that that’s not the way to grow an abundant crop? Or could this be a story not about our understanding of growth, but about God, and how and where God operates?

In Jesus’ story, the sower could represent many things. He or she could be God, Jesus, the disciples…it could even be us. Regardless, do we not share stories with the sower’s experience? Do we not scatter seeds of investing ourselves in ground that does not give the return we expect? What about an investment of time, talent or treasure we’ve made in someone else that didn’t pay off? Perhaps as a parent it’s compassionate guidance that falls on a teenage son or daughter’s deaf ears. Perhaps as someone who is lonely it’s an investment in a friendship that shows no signs of mutual affection. Or perhaps as an employer, it’s a complete commitment to offering workers a living wage and as quality a product as possible, only to see clients flee for what’s cheaper and more profitable. On one level we connect with Jesus’ parable because it speaks to the truth we know in our lives. As Paul Harvey in his radio voice would say, “But that’s not the rest of the story.”

The whole story is that at the end of the parable, there is growth. There is an abundance. There is a hundredfold yield! A seven-fold yield is considered a good amount—plenty to live on for a year. A hundredfold isn’t just abundant. It’s a miracle. The full story of the parable is that God doesn’t just scatter seeds of the saving good news of Jesus everywhere. God scatters those seeds everywhere trusting that an abundant yield is there. That yield may seem hidden now, but it is there, waiting to be revealed. The purpose of the sower—whether it is God, Jesus, the disciples, or us—is to continue to scatter seeds of investment in others—even in those where no results seem possible. Regardless of the outcome, we trust that God will make the abundance visible in surprising, unexpected ways.

The history of the Christian church is replete with examples of ways in which we have made it up to God to scatter seeds of God’s love, rather than us. The church been more comfortable believing those inside the church are good soil, and that it’s God’s job to scatter the seeds out in the world where all the rocky soil is, so they can be brought in to the church and grow. This is what happened in the year 325 C.E. when the Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as his Empire’s state religion. The church became faced with the challenge of becoming an institution unto itself, and seeing only itself as the good soil—the arena of God’s saving activity. The problem is that there is just as much rocky, thorny, and hard-packed soil in the church as outside it. Jesus’ parable says nothing about whether we have a choice about whether we are good soil or not.

But we do have a choice about whether we will seek out the One who chooses to scatter seeds of God’s love and power on us no matter what kind of soil we are. We can go out into the arena of the world where God’s saving activity promises to take place in the least “strategic” of places and the least “worthy” of people. We can scatter the seeds of God’s love and power as freely and indiscriminately as God does.

In a book called Pathyway to Renewal that many leaders in our church have been reading, the authors drive home this kind of approach to evangelism. Even when churches struggle, the book says it is not true that the salvation of this or any church lies outside our walls. The truth is that we have salvation right here, right now—in the freely given seeds of God’s power and love that Jesus scatters on us. The church has already been saved. We have all we need to go out and scatter those seeds of the life-saving gospel of Jesus.

How do we do that? We tell stories. We tell stories of Jesus and his love. We can tell Jesus’ story and trust it has the power to produce a hundredfold of God's grace, love and justice. We can trust that the yield will be abundant. Jesus’ story, after all, is the one that makes us grow. It’s his parable that shows there’s all different kinds of people beyond these walls hungering to have seed scattered on them. When we tell his story, we find that it’s not just we who are telling about Jesus’ love; it’s Jesus who tells the story of his love through us. Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on July 3, 2011

Third Sunday after Pentecost
(Lectionary 14A)

Zechariah 9:9-12
Psalm 145:8-14
Romans 7:15-25a
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

[Jesus spoke to the crowd saying:] "But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.' For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon'; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds." At that time Jesus said, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

As we celebrate our nation’s values this Independence Day weekend, one of the ones that rises to the top is our value of “hard work.” We believe an “American Dream” that says we can accomplish anything we want, be anything we want, and do anything we set our minds to...if we can just work hard enough. If someone is in need, hard work is the solution. They’ve got to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”, we say. But what about when such lives have so few resources left they hardly have any straps left to pull on? Or, when someone asks for help, we often say “no” while adding, “we only help those who help themselves,” even crediting the Bible for that saying, even though that line never appears anywhere in Scripture. Yes, this country’s economic capacity, its ingenuity and its resiliency are grounded on the value of hard work. But this value can come at the high cost of leaving behind the poor and disabled. Hard work can lead to a “workaholism” that severely threatens the health of our families and our communities.

It’s no wonder then that we find such relief in one of Jesus’ most well-known sayings: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (11:28-30) Rest. An easy yoke. A light burden. What Jesus promises sounds so appealing to our overworked lives, but can it be true?

Lutherans have been taught that it’s not our own good works that save us, but rather God’s grace. Can it be true that we don’t have to work so hard--that Jesus’ promised rest can free us from that burden? We may believe that we are “justified by grace through faith apart from works” (Paul). But our lives reflect that we believe our justification before God actually depends on us. Something keeps telling us that to justify ourselves, we have to do more, be more, try harder and prove ourselves worthy to earn God’s love. The hard thing is that that hunger has a way of never, ever ending.

As we dance this tension between grace and works, Episcopal preacher Barbara Brown Taylor notes that we still “labor under the illusion that our yokes [need to be carried] alone, that the only way to please God is to load ourselves down with heavy requirements--good deeds, pure thoughts, blameless lives, pure obedience--all those rules we make and break and make and break, while all the time Jesus is standing right there in front of us.” (Seeds of Heaven) Jesus stands there right in front of us this day--as we ponder offering again our sacrifices to the American altar of “hard work.” Jesus offers us something else: that all God requires of us is to belong to God through him. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

When Jesus says this, he has just sent the disciples out on their mission to spread the gospel. One could look at him and say, he’s just sent them out to do hard work to earn their keep. But the disciples know, just as we know, that the work Jesus equips his disciples for comes with a promise. The disciples go to share the good news they've been given. They are not alone. He walks with them. No matter what the outcome, they will always belong to him. Jesus doesn’t leave his disciples without a yoke—without any purpose. They have a role to play in his ministry. Jesus’ yoke is a light one. It flows from his grace--grace that he does not come break our backs with the weight of heavy expectations. He comes with grace to sustain our lives with his life, so that we might have life in his name.

There may be some who are more familiar with farming equipment like yokes than I am. But I learned something new this week about yokes from Ms. Taylor. There are one person yokes, where a contraption is put over an oxen’s back, so that it can pull the yoke behind it and plow the rows in the soil for planting seeds. The person guides the yoke so as to keep the animal from veering too far one way or the other. But then there is also the two-person yoke, which looks very similar, but that also has room for two animals or two people to hold it and guide it. The thing about two-person yokes, however, is that one person does not have to do all the work. The weight of the yoke can be shared as the work is done.

When Jesus says “take my yoke upon you”, I believe he is talking about a two-person yoke. He’s telling us we don’t have to do it all. It’s not about who can carry the heaviest load, but who is willing to share their load with him. Are we willing this day to lay down what weighs on us, and to share it with Jesus? When Jesus asks us to take his yoke upon us, he’s not asking to add another piece of weight to squelch our already guilt-ridden souls. He’s saying, “There is a place on my yoke for you. Join me. Bear this yoke of grace with me. For this load is as light as a feather when it is shared. Join me in giving gospel life to the world. Though we will be tired, we will not be exhausted. For I will share it with you.”

Jesus invites us to walk the co-yoked daily walk of faith. This is a walk that opens up pathways of our lives like plowed rows of soil, ready to be sprinkled with the seeds of God’s manifold mercy. We do not have to do the heavy lifting. Jesus reminds us that he has already done the heavy lifting of the heaviest yoke of all for us on the yoke of the cross.

In Africa there is a proverb: “We can run much faster by ourselves, but we can walk much further together.” In walking the way of faith that runs the course of our lives, we could try to get much more accomplished on our own. But we can walk the way of faith with Jesus by doing it together with him, and with one another. We can stop to check in with another member of the church we don’t know (even when we don’t feel like it); we can avoid the temptation to do our spiritual practices like reading Scripture, praying and serving others all on our own; we can admit the weight on our lives because of a burden we carry is too heavy, and find new life by no longer carrying it all alone.

In walking the co-yoked walk of Jesus’ way, we will find that his is not a way of guilt, shame or fear. It is a walk that has nothing to do with earning anything by “hard work”, or “doing it on our own.” We will find his is a co-yoked walk that is full of all the love and power we need to sustain our lives, to sustain one another and to sustain the life of the world. It is that “light” purpose to which we as his disciples have been called and to which we are now sent, together. Amen.