|
Back to Sermon Archives
July 13, 2008
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Genesis 25:19-34, Romans 8:2-9a, Matthew 13:1-9,
18-23
Letting Go, Letting God: Holding Out in ’Seedingly
Stony Places
All us descendants of our frantically founding Methodist John Wesley need to hear
with Paul, there is time “instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace
what the Spirit is doing in us!” Simply embrace. Don’t do something,
stand there. Be still and know that I am God. Let go and let God – be
in us, between us, around us, among us – to every last end of the earth. Let
the earth be alive with God! With the miracles of God’s provision and proliferation
for all.
I’m no farmer or gardener – nor an investor in any traditional sense. I am
told in Jesus’ time the average yield on invested seeds was between 7 and 8-fold.
10-fold was good. We can only imagine how it sounded when Jesus spoke of 100-fold,
60-fold, even 30-fold! Jesus shatters all expectations – if only we open ourselves
to the fullest extent and expanse of his passionate presence and powerful promise!
We may feel like most of these seeds -- so pecked, so withered, so choked by our
circumstances and conditions – personal, relational, congregational, communal, national,
global – at whatever levels and in whatever realms we look for God. Yet the
yield Jesus speaks of exceeds highest hopes!
We seem so persuaded by paucity, so stymied by scarcity. How do we identify
with the casual, even the carefree confidence of this sower? How do we find
ourselves in these scattered seeds of plucky persistence and stubborn survival?
The sower does not seem to care, much less to contain or control, where the seeds
are scattered. Are we called in making investments of our lives and our life
together to pay only modest attention to all these odds against us? Even to
disregard or overlook some more obvious conditions “on the ground” as we like to
say? Conditions of our exposure and vulnerability, our stoniness and our scorched-earthiness?
Are we to scatter seeds boldly, confidently, expectantly – whatever the ground they
may land on? Whatever the forms the odds against our success may take?
Are we to pay less attention to who we are not, what’s wrong with us, what
we do not have to work with? And more to who we are, what’s right with
us, and our gifts for doing all we can with what we’ve got?
Jesus points us to our own fecundity. It is one thing to condemn seeds that
fail and soil that abets them. It is another thing to thank God for seeds
that are able to bloom where they are planted and for receptive soil that makes
possible life and growth, progress and change. Jesus seems to be saying, if
we do not use all our seeds, spreading them as freely and fully as we can, then
we may miss the soil where the seeds will have the best chance! To paraphrase
Paul in another part of Romans, if we don’t try, at least, to save everybody, we
surely will miss somebody – and we may end up not saving anybody. Because
we never know the fruits of our labors! Our work is to keep sowing seeds.
Doing the best we can with whatever we’ve got. Their disposition and
increase are up to God.
We proposes, but God disposes! God disregards and overlooks much about us
– such as our pretenses to any worthiness to receive. God’s own grace and
generosity live in us if we let them. God’s word as Jesus proclaims it uproots
and subverts deep assumptions about what is prudent, who is deserving.
The rain and the sun fall on the just and the unjust alike. So do we turn
from such an all-giving God in fear or in shame for ourselves? Or do we stumble
on toward the presence and power in gratitude and in courage? Clarence Jordan
says seeds have a habit of pushiness! It looks like they’ll never break through.
Then they lift clods of dirt 20 times larger than they are! Saying, “Get out
of the way, clod, I’m movin’ to God.” Will you say it with me? Life
will not be denied or sold short.
“On and on the kingdom goes,” says Jordan – beginning now, beginning with us.
Stephen Mitchell implies, in another of our Words for Meditation, the sower may
even be drawn to the “’seedingly stony” places – where it is hardest to hold out!
After all rocks and stones are who we are – the third rock from the sun – and especially
in Nevada! Rocky resistance helps keep us faithfully to endure.
Know that gospel song? Like a plucky, stubborn seed – “Lord, help me to hold
out! Lord, help me to hold out. Lord, help me to hold – until my change
comes!”
Mitchell says the seed may take centuries, even millennia. I was told in first
service this morning of a struggle for custody taking three years to partial fruition
– feeling much longer than that, I am sure. Are we willing to go the distance?
Invest in the longest haul? In God’s time the stones will crumble!
The stoniest soil will bring forth fruit! Are those the “natural” facts of
the matter? Or this there something else going on here as well?
Who knows? We live by “faith facts” as well as natural ones! We rejoice
in the dynamic creative tension where science and religion embrace and engage one
another. Who know what finally happens – and why? Churches exist to
question, What else is going on here? What else -- more than meets
the eye? What else – more than fits the tradition? What else –
more than suits the logic? What else -- not yet given vision and voice?
We remember that faith is believing in what we only have hoped for but not yet seen.
It is believing, even acting against the evidence – then watching evidence change!
How do we know whether, or when, God is “done” with us? Has any of us ever
come to that magic moment? When all of a sudden we know beyond doubt God has
nothing more to show us? We have seen and heard it all? When we can
say, “I’m done! Take me out of the oven! Pass me around! I’m ready
to eat!” Someone has said our sacramental way of life is all about eating
and being eaten. Speaking of which, and of creative gardening, does anyone
know the song of Lee Hayes who sang with Pete Seeger and the Weavers? The
words –
If I should die before I wake, / All of my bones and sinew take.
Put me in the compost pile / To decompose me for a while.
Worms, water, sun, will have their way, / Returning me to common clay.
All that I am will feed the trees / And little fishies in the seas.
When radishes and corn you munch, / You may be having me for lunch.
And then excrete me with a grin, / Chortling, “There goes lee again.”
’Twill be my happiest destiny / To die and live eternally.
Moreover, Ellen Goodman’s column this week is entitled, “A garden of one’s own is
more than just seeds in the ground.” It’s about a campaign to grow a “kitchen
garden” on the White House lawn! “Kitchen Gardeners International” want us
to “think global, eat local” – as local as our front and back yards! Our average
food travels 1500 miles and consumes 400 gallons of fuel in the process. Jesus
is all about hand-sown, hand-picked, hand-delivered, and hand-cooked meals here!
Worldwide food prices are up 45 percent in two years. Reducing the carbon
foot-print on our dinner plate may not be quite as simple as it sounds, but we are
obliged to think about feeding corn to our cars while children go hungry.
Jesus just might like the idea of “edible landscapes” – even of which our bodies
(like his!) are part! Check out the Internet site called EatTheView.org.
Did anyone visit the new outdoor market on West Street this week? We worry
about human uses of our balcony -- People sleeping and performing bodily functions
behind the ivy. Are there ways to be planting seeds there instead? Some
kind of rooftop or balcony garden? What are the limits in God’s
sight to all the creative approaches possible to our financial and other such challenges?
Who says we are limited only to conventional and traditional choices?
Why would these seeds die? Stephen Mitchell asks. Why would we think God gives
up on us? Why would we give up on God? Why would we assume anything
less than the best about God – or us? Why would we deny or sell short all
that God and we yet might create? All we are saying is, give God a chance!
Who says we cannot hold out in ’seedingly stony places? Here we are, at 140
years this year as a congregation -- and counting! And we are not talking
just about “us!” (It’s about justice, not “just us!”) We stand in a
long and glorious line of saints who show us the way. What kind of seeds do
we think we are?!
Even God makes do with just one handful of seeds in four! That average might
not keep God in the Big Leagues long! Some 75 percent of the seeds fall on
hardpan, rocks, and thorns. Just 25 percent find deep and receptive soil --sounds
like Nevada to me! How accidental, how arbitrary which-seed-falls-where seems
to be. And so it should be for us: There but for the grace of God in any condition,
any circumstance goes any one of us! We see that’s as true of nations and
whole peoples under God – however invincible and invulnerable we like to think we
are. I speak for myself. I know how easy it is for me to fall any time or
place.
There are so many of us pushing away – like seeds in the dark – without even a glimpse
of the light yet! So many odds against us, so many good reasons why we cannot
do what we may be called to do. Each of us pushes aside some “clod” of our
lives as we’re moving to God! Can we do it here? Can we do it now?
Can we do it with this person? Or with that organization? The answer is always
– Just grow! The best way we can with whatever we’ve got! Is it that
easy? No! Is it that simple? Yes! Just grow! How do
we know? How we might grow? What odds we might overcome? What
real choice do we have anyway?
Paul points us to the powerful promise and passionate presence of the Spirit of
Jesus within and among us. God will not take our “no” as the final word about
Jesus’ life and work. God will not let Jesus stay dead but will raise him
to make more trouble – like a subterranean subversion of all things ordered by one
of those plucky stubborn seeds -- moving the clod, getting to God! Paul recalls
the Spirit is wind – blowing where and how it will – sometimes “with us,” sometimes
“against us” – so apparent in times of raging fire, smothering smoke. No longer
withholding God’s self, no longer distant and pure, remote and irrelevant -- God
risks everything on us -- goes for the jugular, Paul puts it – for real and forever.
In Jesus and the Spirit, God personally takes on the whole human condition and circumstance!
God embraces, engages our completely disordered mess of struggling humanity! Is
God who takes such risks for us ever is done with us yet? Just like Rebekah,
mother of rivals Jacob and Esau, our God is as One Womb, bearing many peoples!
One Earth, bearing many nations! One Sower, bearing many seeds! One
Parent, bearing many children! One Body, many parts! One Mansion, many
rooms! One Sermon, many amens! Many amens? Amen!
top of page
Archives
|
