Good Seeds Growing

If you were to come to my house
you might just drive-up Cardigan Circle
and think, you know, this yard could serve as an illustration for Jesus’ parable,
about the wheat and the weeds growing together.

We have good things –
beautiful shrubs, trees, a rainbow of flowers and ripening vegetables,
but we also have weeds – lots and lots of weeds –
in the grass,
in the flowerbeds,
and coming up in the cracks of the sidewalk.

We are letting it all grow right there together.

I console myself remembering what one of our own master gardeners
Has told me before about the presence of weeds in the garden –
Hey! It’s all green!

Perfectly located in the midst of our summer growing season,
Jesus continues to teach us about the Kingdom of God through
stories of soil and plants and seeds and harvest,
with a parable of wheat and weeds growing side by side.

Jesus uses these symbols to give us an insightful vision
of the way we experience life as well as a God’s eye view.

We all know there are signs
of God’s presence, protection and peace in the world around us,
And every day we benefit from the blessings God freely gives us.

And, yet, at the same time,
there are signs of evil, and sickness and violence,
in our world and in our lives.

There are both people and communities
seeking to serve God’s kingdom
and there people and groups
who are actively working against it.

Good and evil intentions are at work all around us,
and not only in the world around us,
but also within us.
And the roots of both are tangled up.

Sometimes it’s impossible to separate the good from the bad.

In my life and in yours there will always be things about life and faith that remain a mystery,
But Jesus offers us clarity about a few things in this particular story.

First, God plants good things.
God has good things in mind for us.
Our father, who graciously gives us life is also kind and good to us.

The evil things that we see and experience – sickness and division between people –
none of this comes from God.
The lie that “God will not give us more than we can handle” is proved by Jesus
to be not only sterile
but without basis at all.

God only brings benefits and blessings to us.
Divisions between people don’t come from God.
God does not put obstacles in our way.

God instead is active comforting us when we are challenged and disappointed,
and helps us in our aim to follow him.

Second, God wants us to be fruitful,
And God wants our community to be concerned with bearing good fruit,
And bearing fruit takes time.

God is patient.

The Sower in Jesus’ story didn’t overact
or lose his cool and rip out the weeds to the detriment of the wheat,
but simply let the weeds and wheat co-exist.

And so, like God, we are to be patient.
We are to care for and tend the good wheat
and we are to seek to be patient with the weeds,
knowing that they won’t always be there.

God will put an end to all that makes us stumble
And God will ultimately defeat every power that opposes the Kingdom.

Perhaps, let us hope, that God who raised Jesus from the dead
can even turn weeds into wheat, in God’s good time.

Until then, I don’t know about you, but I struggle with waiting.
I am not the most patient person by nature.

Even though we know that God is a Sower of good seeds,
I think we often struggle with waiting for those good seeds to grow.

But God is patient.

God sees beyond Christ’s return,
when the crucified One will come again,
and in the power of his resurrection,
no weeds will grow to choke out the wheat,
and no sickness and no sorrow will bother us or bring us down,
no division will exist any longer between God’s people.

God sees clear through it all to the harvest to come,
when all God’s children will be gathered into the company of one family,
one community of an undivided heart,
perfectly loving one another and perfectly loving God,
where former enemies are friends,
and where we all shine like the brightness of the sun.

We are waiting for that day like a mother in the pain of childbirth
Waiting for the child to come
Waiting for the glory yet to be revealed,

And yet, even now we hope in that day to come.

Even now we know that this power is tangled up and rooted in our daily lives.

God can and does surprise us.

The power of Jesus’ resurrection is at work in the world and is at work in us,
Leading us by the Spirit to witness to our identity as children of God.

Today 25 members of our youth ministry team
leave directly after worship for Savannah, GA,
to spend a week serving that community
and working to make the world look more like the world Jesus asks us to imagine.

Our whole congregation is a part of this mission
because you all have supported our youth ministry
financially and with prayer and with your guidance.

First let’s reflect on what we are not going to Savannah to do.

We are not going to Savannah to take Jesus to people who need to meet him.

Jesus who goes with us, and he is already there,
already working in the lives of the children we’ll play games with,
the homeless persons who we’ll talk with,
the elderly whose bedsides we’ll visit.

We are also not going to fix anyone.

We might change some lightbulbs
or paint a fence
or even do some light remodeling of a home,
but we’re not trying to solve the problem of homelessness or poverty.

We are also not going to Savannah have an “experience” of pure enjoyment for ourselves,
or to add to a list of personal adventures,
or even for the experience of offering charity to the less fortunate.

We are going to Savannah
with the goal of letting our Lord Jesus
who has made us good seeds
also grow us into wheat through serving others.

We are going in order to learn from Jesus
about leaving our comfort behind,
leaving our judgment of others behind,
and leaving our judgment of ourselves behind.

We are going to Savannah to be witnesses –

To watch Jesus at work in the lives of the people we meet
And to see Jesus at work in one another
And to experience Jesus at work in ourselves
And to grow in following him.

We will see real poverty and we will see real suffering,
Just as there is real poverty and suffering here in Richmond and all over the world,
but we know Jesus is already there,
And will continue to be there,
And invites us there… to meet him and to learn from him and to grow in him.
On the cross, Jesus himself became a grain of wheat that died and rose again.

And Jesus lives,

giving us a vision of a day when fire will consume all sorrow and worry,
When God will end the divisions we invent between people,
When God will bring an end to all war and violence and suffering and abuse.
Jesus gives us a vision of a day when there will be no need for mission trips,
Or a collection for Journey House,
Our counseling and therapy,
Or hospitals and health care professionals
Or hospice workers and funeral homes.

All these things will end.
God who can clearly see the good from the bad
Will eliminate all evil
and all that opposes God’s love and mercy and forgiveness.

In the meantime,
As we seek God’s patience in waiting for that bright day to come
Jesus has rooted us in his love
And sends his Spirit to renew us in the living waters of our baptism,
Giving us growth as we join him in his mission.

So, let us grow in God.

Let us be glad to serve.

And let us find joy in the Lord.

May it be so.

Amen.

Living Out Loud

Earlier this summer we had a strange thing happen in our family.

Sarah and I noticed that when we would ask our son, Samuel, who just turned 8, to pick up his toys, or to come get into the car so we could go somewhere, to come to supper, he was completely unresponsive. It was like he didn’t hear us at all, or like he wasn’t listening, or like he was ignoring us.

And this isn’t who Samuel is – he’s a good listener – but we were getting frustrated with the situation, when Samuel began to feel bad and developed a fever, and so we took him to the doctor, and found out that he actually had an ear infection.

Samuel wasn’t ignoring us. But instead, because of swelling in his ears, he just literally couldn’t hear us.

In today’s gospel story we hear of a Canaanite woman who comes to Jesus shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” and then we hear: But Jesus did not answer her at all.

I don’t know about you, but this isn’t how I imagine Jesus would respond. It sounds like Jesus wasn’t listening or was even ignoring the woman.

He sounds aloof and inaccessible, and when I think of Jesus I tend to think of his availability – like when he encourages us to pray and promises to hear us, or instances in which he is listening so deeply he can hear what the disciples or the crowds are thinking in their hearts without being told.

So — is it that Jesus didn’t hear the woman or was he putting her off or is there some other explanation as to why the most compassionate human of all time would seem to disregard this person in her time of crisis?

I also wonder if this episode reminds us of times we’ve prayed and felt God returned our petition with silence?

Whatever we think about this encounter, Jesus is definitely more merciful than the disciples who would’ve rather sent this woman away.

Yes – we know that there were all sorts of reasons for that – we know that the culture of the day saw her as an untouchable- someone to be avoided – she was single woman (that’s strike one), who was not a Hebrew, (strike two), and would’ve been seen as unclean for not following ritual law (strike three) – and so everyone would have been eager to get rid of her.

But instead of dismissing her, Jesus breaks his silence, and responds by saying he has been sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

It seems like a cold response, but it show Jesus heard her.

And then their conversation gets interesting.

It’s a real back and forth. Almost like a wrestling match akin to Jacob and God wrestling by the river, but here, these two opponents aren’t sparing with hands or fists, but with words.

She counters his seeming coldness with humility. “Lord, help me,” she says kneeling.

So Jesus fires away again, responding that he is bread for the children, not for the dogs, (that is that he has come for the Hebrew people, not for others), but the woman comes in close with the knock-out punch: “but Lord,” she says, “even dogs in their hunger are grateful for the crumbs.”

As if imploring Muhammed Ali’s famous rope-a-dope technique, this woman has quietly waited and absorbed Jesus’ barbs, and now she pounces to surprise everyone looking on with the winning response, so that Jesus says in front of everyone: “Great is your faith!” As he heals her daughter.

In the end, Jesus gives the gift of healing, but it’s a strange picture of Jesus that gets us there. 

Some people say Jesus needed to learn from the woman, other people say Jesus was speaking racist and sexist views, but that everyone in his day thought this way.

But could it be that in the same way Samuel’s earache was the unknown explanation behind our frustration this summer, there’s an explanation here and that Jesus is up to more-than-meets-the-eye with this woman?

I’ve been reading Isabel Wilkerson’s profound and eye-opening book “Caste: the Origins of Our Discontent.” She doesn’t make mention of this bible passage but she does speak eloquently about racism and its effects in making us blind to our neighbor’s humanity.

In fact, she makes that case that what we have had and continue to have in in America is in fact a caste system similar to India which sets up an artificial hierarchy that determines people’s standing by race, creates assumptions of beauty and competence, and lays the ways for who gets access to resources.

Most insightfully, Wilkerson makes the case that people of privilege and power have the responsibility to  work for reconciliation and justice with what she calls radical empathy:

“Radical empathy,” she says, “means putting in the work to educate oneself and to listen with a humble heart to understand another’s experience from their perspective, not as we imagine we would feel. It is the kindred connection from a place of deep knowing that opens your spirit to the pain of another as they perceive it. And people who have hit the caste lottery are not in a position to tell a person who has suffered under the tyranny of caste what is offensive or hurtful or demeaning. The price of privilege is the moral duty to act when one sees another person treated unfairly.

To me it seems that Jesus is practicing radical empathy toward this woman. He is listening to this woman on her own terms – he has seen her wrongful bondage to caste as a woman and a gentile and he illuminates her plight in their public sparing.

Not only does he hear her, in fact, but he gives her a platform and amplifies her voice for all to hear.

And with her voice, because of her encounter with Jesus, she displays among all the people who looked down upon her, that she alone among them has the vision to see who Jesus really is.

She becomes the model for faith through her love of God and her insistence on caring for her daughter, and so Jesus lifts her up as the person having a heart that pleases God.

Jesus’ radical empathy gives this woman the healing she desires and sets her free.

There may be times when we feel God has met our prayers with silence,

But the larger truth is that God has also offered us radical empathy – by listening with the humble heart of Jesus in order to understand our human experience.

Jesus also felt God’s silence when he prayed in the garden that the cup of suffering could pass without his need to drink from it, and again as he hung on the cross, he felt God’s silence louder, dare I say, than we ever could, but in God’s act to raise Jesus from the dead God has broken the silence forever.

God hears us, and never stops listening, 

And God not only hears us, but God speaks to us and through us so that others can hear God’s word.

In the body of Christ set loose and made free God brings a new kind of love to the world.

It is a love that has the power to break the castes we create and include everyone in the joy of God,

It is a love that has the power to turn the world upside down with acts of restoration and reconciliation.

God’s love is the power to set us free, like this woman in the gospel, so that we too are unbothered about making a scene by loving God for others to see.

I mean, just look at the Canaanite woman as she shouts for all to hear. As she spills her wishes for all to see, as she stops at nothing to connect with Jesus.

It seems to me that being people who follow Jesus means to be willing to risk making a scene from time to time–

It reminds me of Taylor Swift’s comments at NYU’s 2022 commencement ceremony. As she addressed the crowd she said:

And while we’re talking about things that make us squirm but really shouldn’t, I’d like to say that I’m a big advocate for not hiding your enthusiasm for things. It seems to me that there is a false stigma around eagerness in our culture of ‘unbothered ambivalence.’ This outlook perpetuates the idea that it’s not cool to ‘want it.’ Listen to me when I say this: Never be ashamed of trying.

Following Jesus is simply not hiding God’s enthusiasm for the world that lives in us.

Living out loud in witness to our faith can be anything from praying publicly in a restaurant, to serving a meal at the Hull Street Road Shelter, to wearing an Epiphany t-shirt or jacket, to wearing a keychain on our bookbag with God’s blessing on it.

Living out loud in witness to God is seeing a new student at our school and talking to them when they don’t know anyone yet as a reminder that God listens to us and knows when were scared and walks with us into new places that can be overwhelming.

Living out loud in witness to Jesus is our Stephen’s Ministers who listen to individuals who have come to a place in their life where they need a season of one-on-one care and prayer and a friendship to remind them that God listens and hears us.

Living out loud in witness to God is members of our church council who have it on their heart to talk about how Epiphany can be more open and welcoming of racial diversity and how we can build relationships as a congregation and in our personal lives to offer radical empathy.

My friends, God listens to our prayers – always – and God speaks the word of forgiveness and welcome to you today. God feeds you at his table. God restores you in this day’s baptism in the Holy Spirit, and God leads the way out into the world, so that you and I can listen deeply to God and to those searching for God, and help God make that connection.

For those who have ears to hear, listen to this: Christ is with you and there is no greater calling than to follow him.

May God’s word dwell richly in us, and may we never be ashamed of God’s love for every person.

May God continue to empower our listening, so that we would hear the Spirit guiding our hearts.

And may God be merciful to us and bless us, so that all the peoples of the nations may praise God together.