The Rich Man and Lazarus

Luke 16:19-31

19 "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 24 He called out, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.' 25 But Abraham said, "Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.' 27 He said, "Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house— 28 for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.' 29 Abraham replied, "They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' 30 He said, "No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' 31 He said to him, "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' "

            Life isn’t fair. If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard that statement at least a hundred times in your life, and if you have never heard that statement or if you refuse to believe it is true, I have some bad news for you: life really isn’t fair. I’ve come to that conclusion not (only) through my own experiences of life’s inconsistencies, but through my experiences serving as a pastor. I’ve witnessed it as I’ve sat with people in their living rooms and heard them speak of how illness has taken their loved ones too early. I’ve witnessed it as I’ve listened to the same people pray for a job year after year after year. I’ve witnessed the reality that life isn’t fair as I’ve walked alongside so many who have had to deal with each unfair turn in the road of their lives. Yet I think my most direct experiences of life’s unevenness have come as I’ve walked the halls of hospitals.

            At any point there are numerous examples of how unfair life can be in the less-than-sterile rooms of a hospital. Just take a stroll down the maternity wing. There a couple welcomes their first child into the world. In that room they are surrounded by their family and friends, all snapping pictures with their phones or cameras. The room is lined with helium-filled balloons, cellophane-wrapped gift baskets, and piles of presents in pastel-printed paper from other friends and family. Their child will be loved; their child will be supported; their child will have opportunities and advantages for success in its life. Laughter and the sounds of joy fill that room so much that they spill out in to the hallway…but the source of that joy doesn’t quite reach the room across the hall.

            There, in that room, a young girl lies in her bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Her newborn baby is down the hall, in the nursery. Just like the first couple’s child, hers was born healthy, but there are no family members taking pictures. No friends brought gifts. Even the child’s father is nowhere to be found. She lies alone with her thoughts and the knowledge that her child won’t have the love and support of the child across the hall; her child won’t have the sort of advantages that come from that sort of support system. The saddest thing though, the thinks to herself, is that her child had no say in how it came into the world. Her child had no choice in the matter when it came to the circumstances into which it would be born. The truth is none of us do. None of us have any say as to what kind of life we will be born into, and that just isn’t fair.

            Life isn’t fair. It isn’t fair because some of us are born like the rich man, here in Jesus’ story. Some of us are born into lives of plenty, lives where we can dress in the warm robes or royalty, lives where the pantry is never bare and there is ample opportunity for growth and success. If only we were all born that way, then maybe—just maybe—life would at least seem fair, but life isn’t fair.

It isn’t fair because some of us are born like Lazarus, left to beg at the gates of those who were born into more fortunate circumstances. It is Lazarus who truly shows us the imbalance in life’s random blessings. The text implies that Lazarus was laid at the gate of the rich man’s estate through no power of his own. Lazarus is not the conjured panhandler of our imaginations seeking to justify our ignorance. No, he is a disabled human being, perhaps born with a malformation that has crippled him his entire life. This fictional poor man of Jesus’ story is not one who rises early in the morning, dresses in his costume, and sits before the rich man’s gate with cardboard sign and tin cup; this character Lazarus is one who has been dealt the unfair cards of biology and chance. He has been dealt an unfair hand, and with it he reminds us that life isn’t fair.

Just like Jesus’ story before us today, we live in a world where there are rich men, people like Lazarus, and everyone in between. While we like to think that we are all products of our own efforts, much about who we are has to do with things beyond our control, things that—at times—are unfair.  However, while life and many of its conditions are indeed unfair, there is one thing that is always fair, one thing that levels the playing field for everybody: death.

Death is fair. I’m sorry to tell you that, but it’s true. While we may all be born into different families and fortunes, death catches us all. Sure, some will put death off a whole lot longer than others, yet in the end, we will all die. The odds are just not in our favor! And I know death is fair, because I’ve seen it. Just as I’ve seen how unfair life is, as a pastor I’ve witnessed the great leveling that comes with death. I’ve stood in places like this, where I’ve seen over a hundred people mourn a person lying in an expensive casket, dressed in fine clothes. Those same people have piled into their nice, shiny cars to drive in a slow processional to watch as that expensive casket was laid in a whole in the earth and covered with dirt. I’ve also stood on the cold concrete of a cemetery pavilion as a less-than-appropriate minister delivered his rote diatribe on sinners in the flames of hell. Then, after a less than enthusiastic response, I joined the mourners in a humble parade of cars swerving across the highway to an unmarked scar in the earth—a pauper’s grave they call it—where their loved one most likely was put to rest in little more than crude pine box. Two very different funerals, but each had the same end, each told the same story. Whether you’re buried with all the pomp and circumstance of a king, or thrown unceremoniously into hole in the ground, death still has the same effect: death is fair.

It’s a lesson we also learn from Jesus’ story here, for while the rich man lived lavishly and Lazarus lied in the gutter, in the end, they both died. But here’s where the story begins to teach us something more, something deeper. What happens in this story after the rich man and Lazarus die is something that was common in many stories in the ancient world[1]: a rich man recognizes the error of his life, and he requests that someone be sent back to his loved ones in order to change their ways, hoping, like the ghosts who visited dear old Mr. Scrooge on Christmas Eve, they would bring such a shock to those still living that their lives would be forever changed and their post-death destination forever altered.

That is where Jesus’ story is different. Yes, the rich man in torment calls out to Abraham asking him to send Lazarus to his five brothers in order that they may avoid the torment he is experiencing in Hades (which, by the way is simply the place of the dead and not necessarily meant to directly describe our image of hell), but Abraham simply replies, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” They’ve got the Scriptures, and that should be enough. Abraham simply tells this rich man in Hades that his five brothers need simply to listen to the words of the Law and the Prophets, and they will avoid such torment. But such an answer doesn’t sit well with one who has had things his way his whole life.

The rich man responds to Abraham: “No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” It’s as if he says to Abraham, “You don’t get it. I had the Scriptures around me my entire life, on the coffee table, the dresser, and the bookshelf. I saw it plastered on bumper stickers and billboards, even heard it on the lips of politicians. They have just as much exposure to the Scriptures as I did; they need something drastic. They need a sign, and sending someone to them from the dead should do the trick!” Can we fault the logic of this rich man? I mean, after all, we live in what folks call the Bible Belt, and yet all around us people are obviously out of touch with the Scriptures. Even those who go around quoting passages from the Bible often do so in such a dangerous and irresponsible way that many are completely turned off not only by what they hear but from whom they hear it! I can’t tell you how many times I’d much rather be able to conjure up some miraculous sign and say “ta-da!” rather than delve into the deep mysteries of Christ in the Scriptures so that others may believe. It would be so much easier if we could just perform some sign that witnessed to the reality of the God we serve in Christ. In the end, however, we must hear those words from Abraham to the rich man: "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” In the end, it is Scripture that will ultimately change the fate of those who wait for death’s leveling.

Now, I don’t doubt that in Luke’s account of Jesus telling this story that there is a strong undercurrent of allusion pulling us towards Christ’s resurrection, but the truth of this story is still found in Abraham’s response to the rich man. You see, Jesus said himself that he came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them. His presence, his actions, his death, and his resurrection did not render the words of those ancient Scriptures useless. Rather, Jesus’ life and teachings fulfilled those words, gave them the full power of their meaning.

So, as we hear these words from Scripture, what are they saying to us? What is Jesus’ story here really about? In the story, if Abraham’s response to the rich man is what we are left with, then how should we hear it?

Let’s think about it this way: what if the rich man got what he wanted and Abraham had indeed sent Lazarus to his brothers? What exactly would Lazarus have said? I think it would’ve gone something like this: “You sinners! You who live in such spoiled wealth! Repent! For your brother who has died lived the same life as you and is now suffering in the tormenting flames of hell! Repent, therefore, and you may avoid his eternal fate!” Now, many of you would likely “Amen!” such a sermon, but think about it from the perspective of Jesus’ actual story. Abraham tells the rich man that his brothers should simply listen to Moses and the Prophets. But here’s the rub: Moses and the Prophets (along with the gospels and the epistles of our New Testament) speak less of avoiding eternal torment and a great deal more about loving our neighbors, caring for the poor, the orphan, and the widow. The Bible is filled with passages about helping our needy neighbor and serving each other. In fact, the Scriptures talk a whole lot more about how we make life fair, than they ever do about where we wind up on the other side of death. In other words, if you go to the Bible hoping to find the magic words to say to keep you out of hell, you will surely come away disappointed, for Scripture and the God of whom it testifies calls us to changed lives, not simply a change in our eternal resting place.

So what does that mean for us? It means that our eternal destination is not simply determined by our personal desire to just stay out of hell, to avoid the frightening images of flaming torment. It means our faith ought to be grounded in the teachings of Scripture as they guide us to make this life fair by loving each other and all of those in this world who may have been dealt an unfair hand. It means that life on this side of eternity is just as important as life on the other side. Jesus’ story about the rich man and Lazarus teaches us that the words of Scripture act to shape us more and more like Christ, who is the living Word of God, the fulfillment of the written word of God.

So may we hear the lesson of the rich man and Lazarus. May we seek to overcome this life’s imbalances as we share not only our lives with each other, but also the Good News of God’s salvation. Let us turn to the pages of Scripture as they guide us in our journey towards being more and more like the Christ who calls us into eternal fellowship. Today, may we hear this story from the word of God and may the Word himself continue to shape us into his likeness. Amen.

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[1] Hull, William E., The Broadman Bible Commentary, Vol. 9: Luke-John. Broadman Press: Nashville. p. 132.

Weeds in the Flower Bed

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

24 He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27 And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, "Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?' 28 He answered, "An enemy has done this.' The slaves said to him, "Then do you want us to go and gather them?' 29 But he replied, "No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30 Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.' "

…

36 Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field." 37 He answered, "The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; 38 the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40 Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 42 and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!

If you take a left onto Coffee County Road 618, your tires will trade the smooth, black, asphalt of County Road 610 for hard-packed, red clay and loose gravel. Don’t worry though; you won’t have to go far. Just about two hundred yards down that red dirt road you’ll come to a driveway on the right; that’s what used to be my grandma’s house. I say used to be because my uncle lives there now and the house has gone through a great deal of changes. Perhaps the biggest change, though, has nothing to do with the floor plan of the house; really it has little if anything to do with the house itself. You see, when Grandma was alive—even in her later, less coherent year—she kept a flower bed in the front of that house. I can remember walking with her in the front yard (of course, she was barefoot), asking her about each of the colorful plants that grew there. There were elegant, orange tiger lilies; a tall, thorny rose bush; great, round, hydrangeas in hues of pale blue; delicate red-orange spider lilies; and a massive camellia tree on the corner that seemed to anchor the entire house (it was by far my favorite and is still my favorite flower for that very reason; I’d like to even think it’s the state flower of Alabama because those who name such things saw my grandma’s first). She loved those flowers. Perhaps they served as some sort of reminder to her that there are still things in this world that are beautiful, still things that can be cared for and reward us with beauty. I don’t really know why she loved them, but because she did, I did.

But as much as Grandma loved those flowers, I can’t recall her ever really tending to the flower bed. I don’t remember her ever pulling weeds or spraying for bugs. I know she never really pruned them because they sort of wildly grew in every direction. In fact, I don’t recall any sort of edging around her flower bed; the grass from the yard just sort of melded right in. I’m sure weeds grew up right along with the flowers. I’m sure there were other plants that got tangled up in the randomly growing stems and branches of Grandma’s flowers. I’m even sure there were some forgotten toys and a baseball or two hidden somewhere in that undergrowth. While I am certain those weeds and other unwanted things were there in Grandma’s flower bed, I don’t recall any of them with the kind of vivid joy with which I remember her flowers.

I suppose the same can be said about life. There are those times when we can look back on the years, years we are certain contain pain and frustration, and yet all we can truly recall is the joy we experienced. Of course, there are those among us who would have us focus on the pain, on the heartbreak, on the weeds in the flower bed. There are those who seek to rid their lives from those things which might do them harm. They isolate themselves; they remove themselves from the emotional environment of existence. There are those people who seek the safety in the highly sterilized environments of closed-mindedness and selfishness. There are even those who seek such safe havens in what they deem to be the emotionally safe and diversity-free harbor of the church.

Yes, there are those people—lots of people—who see the church as a safe place, a place where people just like them gather together to uphold their disinfected way of thinking. These people believe that the kingdom of God is held in a time yet to come, a time when they will finally be rid of all these other people who contaminate the purity and safety of their constructed lives. Perhaps that saddest thing about these people is that they are not in the minority. No, in fact if we are all honest with each other we may come to discover that we are all in fact (in varying ways and degrees) those people. We claim the church to be a place where we can gather with people who look like us, talk like us, believe like us, and we claim with great joy that surely heaven will be just like this—a place filled with the kinds of people like us, people of whom we approve.

With that sort of thinking, heaven has become some abstract reality in a different location; God’s kingdom has become a place to look forward to, a place that we must be taken to, a place that is outside of our present understanding. Is that what the kingdom is? Is it a place in a different plain of existence? Is the kingdom something outside of our present reality, something hidden behind the blackness of space? Is the kingdom something that can only exist in the sterilized plain of perfection? Or is it possible that the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, can exist and flourish like a flower, even among the weeds?

To read this parable from Jesus in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew’s gospel is to read one of several parables in this chapter dealing with seeds, fields, and sowers. If you were to only read Matthew 13, you might come to the conclusion that Jesus spent more time hanging out at the farmers’ co-op than the synagogue (and in some way, you might be right!). In the particular parable before us today, Jesus tells the story about a householder who sows good seed in his field—seed he knows to be of good quality and free from weeds and other evasive plants. During the dark hours of the night, however, an enemy comes into the field and sows weeds (or tares).

Now, it’s important to point out here that the word Jesus uses in verse 25 to describe the kind of weeds sown by the enemy is the word ζιζάνια, a plant we refer to today as darnel. It is extremely common in areas of the world where wheat is grown. In fact, it looks exactly like wheat until it ripens; then the grains appear black instead of golden. There are forms of darnel that are even poisonous.[1] This weed would have been common in Jesus’ day and no doubt a familiar frustration to those who grew wheat in that region. I think it is worth noting that these weeds look nearly identical to the wheat…that is, until they mature.

In the parable, Jesus tells in verse 28 how eager the householder’s slave are to rid the field of the weeds, but in his wisdom the householder tells them in verses 29 and 30: "…in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” To weed the field at such a time would only damage the crop; letting them grow together would ensure that the wheat would grow undamaged and the householder would have a decent harvest.

This parable, like the parable of the sower in the same chapter, comes with an explanation straight from Jesus himself. In verses 37 through 43, Jesus gives his disciples an explanation of this parable about a householder who lets the weeds grow up with the wheat: “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

Now, before we begin to celebrate this as a story about how great and pure the end is going to be, let’s think about what Jesus is saying here. If the field is the world and the good seed are children of the kingdom and the weeds are the children of the evil one sowed by the devil, then that means God allows the children of his kingdom to grow tangled up with the children of the devil! That means God lets the wheat mature in amongst the tares! God lets the flowers grow in a bed overrun with weeds!

For some folks, this is a troubling thought. After all, why doesn’t God just do away with all the evil in the world? Why doesn’t God just rid the world of disease, hatred, poverty, and injustice? Why doesn’t God simply send his angels to gather up all the pain and wickedness in the world right now? Why does God continue to allow bad things to happen, especially to good, kingdom people? For those people, this parable doesn’t sit well. It just doesn’t make good sense. After all, if we were in God’s place it seems like an easy solution: just wipe out the devil, evil, and all those who seek to do the world harm with one snap of the fingers. But that isn’t how God works.

I don’t mean to try to make any grand theological theories as to why God allows suffering to persist in the world. Sure, I have my own thoughts, but at the end of the day one thing is certain: God allows the kingdom, his children, to grow right along with the weeds, right along with all the evil in the world. Perhaps it is so we will grow stronger, more resilient to the ways of the evil one. Maybe it is so we will come to value the true depth of Christ’s love as we witness the catastrophic symptoms of wickedness. God may allow his kingdom, his children, to grow up right alongside the evil in this world as a reminder of what we once were. God may even let his kingdom grow in the midst of evil so that the good seed might overcome the bad. I don’t really know, but I pray that as we are here, growing in this world right alongside the evil and wickedness planted by the devil, we will understand that there is hope in a day that is indeed coming—a day when evil and sin will be burned in the fire. There is coming a day when those who have sought to follow Jesus in his kingdom’s work will see the fulfillment of that kingdom, a day when “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

That day is indeed coming, but it is not here yet—not in its fullness. So until that day, we grow. We grow among the weeds. We grow in a world where sin and darkness grow. We grow in a world that needs the hope of the Good News. We grow in a world racked with pain, fear, and doubt. We grow in a world where Christ has intervened and the Holy Spirit resides. May we find hope in that coming day when we will experience the fullness of God’s heavenly kingdom, and may we find encouragement in the power of the Holy Spirit as the kingdom grows even in this world, like flowers among the weeds. Amen.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolium_temulentum

Lost and Found

Luke 15:1-10

1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." 3 So he told them this parable: 4 "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5 When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, "Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. 8 "Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9 When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, "Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' 10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

            It was kept behind the counter in the principal’s office at College Street Elementary School. At some point in its earlier days it held a new microwave or some other small kitchen appliance. Just a simple cardboard box with a piece of orange construction paper taped to one side with the words “Lost and Found” written in magic marker. The contents of that box were never really too impressive: a comb with a few missing teeth, a pair of sunglasses with an absent lens, a box of broken crayons missing more than half the colors, maybe even a forgotten Tupperware lid that had been left behind in the lunchroom. Most of the time, it seemed that the “Lost and Found” box was just a halfway-house of sorts, a pit stop for items on their way to the trash. There were those times, however, when a student would wander into the office, fingers crossed, to ask the secretary if maybe, just maybe, they found a retainer in the lunchroom or a wallet on the playground. But those times were few and far between; most often the lost-and-found box was little more than an empty cardboard shell containing broken, forgotten items, things children simply left behind—broken, forgotten things gathering dust in a box stashed on the floor under the counter in the principal’s office.

            We learn from the lost-and-found box that not everything we lose is something we hope to find. Not everything that is lost has someone searching for it. The same can be said for those people we label “lost,” those people who find themselves in humankind’s lost-and-found.  Like a long-forgotten item rattling around the bottom of a cardboard box, those individuals are often pushed to the periphery of society, overlooked, or purposefully ignored. Throughout history we’ve found ways to justify our overlooking those we’ve named the “lost,” those we have no real desire to find. We’ve deemed them incorrigible, lazy, less-than-human. We’ve tried to justify placing our fellow humans in the lost-and-found through economics, politics, sociology, psychology, and yes, even religion. Yes, our sinful habit of ignoring our sisters and brothers in life’s lost-and-found is nothing new.

            It shouldn’t surprise you, though, to find that Jesus was often right in the middle of these kinds of people, the ones rejected by society and misguided religion, and it really shouldn’t shock us too terribly when we hear how the people in those societal and religious circles responded to Jesus and his relationships with “those people.” We have before us today a clear example of those two things in verses one and two of our passage: “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’" Now, in case you’re unaware, the tax collectors and sinners were some of those people that the Pharisees and scribes understood to be unclean, impure, unworthy; they were “those people.”

            You know who “those people” are, don’t you? You sit across from someone in the restaurant and overhear them say something like, “Well I like him just fine, but he’s one of those people.” Or maybe you’ve heard someone say, “I wouldn’t let one of those people near me or my family…I wouldn’t let one of those people touch my food…I don’t want one of those people handling my things.” Maybe you’ve heard something like that before, and maybe the voice you heard saying those sorts of things was your own. Either way, it was with that sort of sentiment that these Pharisees and scribes talked about the tax collectors and other sinners Jesus welcomed to his dinner table—they were those people, and to those Pharisees and scribes, Jesus was guilty by association.

            It is in response to this criticism from these established religious leaders that Jesus responds with three stories (we will only look at the first two today). Responding to the remarks from the Pharisees and scribes about his habit of eating with the “lost-and-found” folks, Jesus says in verses four through six, "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.'” His second story is like the first (in verses eight and nine): "Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.'”

            Now, on the surface, these two stories seem simple enough. A sheep (a common image in that part of the world and an image Jesus often uses in the gospels) wanders off from the flock. It doesn’t seem all that important—after all, there are ninety-nine more just like it that all decided to stay together, to do what they were supposed to do. One straying sheep, however, seems important enough for one to trek out into the thicket, away from the flock, in order to recover it. Not only does Jesus say that one sheep is worth finding, but when it is found, the one who has found it calls all of his friends and neighbors together to rejoice. They’re going to have an “I-found-my-lost-sheep” party. Seems a bit excessive maybe, but to the shepherd who truly loves his flock, the shepherd who knows each of his sheep as his own, such a joyful action needs no rational explanation.

            Then there’s the story about the woman and her coin. Perhaps she sat it on the kitchen table after coming in from the grocery store, and her cat simply thought it was a new play thing, flicking it on the floor to roll under the furniture. Perhaps she tucked it under her mattress with the rest of her savings and simply forgot about it. Maybe, like so many things in our homes, she sat it down in one place only to find it had mysteriously vanished without a trace. Whatever the case may be, she had nine other coins just like it (not a bad sum of money, nine days wages in all), so why fool with looking for this singular coin? It’ll turn up eventually, right? According to Jesus’ story though, this woman wants to find this coin so desperately that she lights a lamp, breaks out the broom, and searches every corner of her house until she finds that lost coin. Then, like the shepherd who finds his lone, lost sheep, she invites her friends and neighbors together to celebrate finding this singular coin (I imagine none of them were all that thrilled with being invited to an “I-found-my-coin-so-let’s-celebrate” party).

            It’s all that celebrating that gets me. Think about it: if you walked out in the parking lot to your car this afternoon and found a quarter you dropped between the seats, would you run around the lot inviting everyone over to your house for lunch? Of course not, I doubt any of us would do such a thing if we found a hundred dollar bill under the passenger side floor mat! What if you’re dog or cat ran away this morning? When you found it, would you call the church office and have us add an announcement in the bulletin about your “I-found-my-cat-going-through-the-neighbor’s-trash” party? Of course not! Unless…unless those things were so important to you, so valuable to you that you would stop at nothing to find them if they were lost.

            Flip the story just a bit; let’s bring Jesus’ story a little closer to home for us. If you were walking with your child or grandchild in (somewhere like) Wal-Mart, and before you know it, they’ve let go of your hand and are out of your sight, off in an unknown direction, what would you do? You’d run all over that place looking for that child (no matter how many more you may have at home), wouldn’t you? Why, you’d empty strangers’ buggies, topple sales displays, go through every door marked “employees only,” and when you found your lost child, your heart would be filled with a mixture of relief and joy. Joy: We rejoice when we find something we’ve lost when it’s something we value, something we will miss, something that would never be left behind in a cardboard box marked “Lost-and-Found.”

            And that, I think, is where we find the depth of these two parables from Jesus. Do you remember Jesus’ other words from this passage, the words he says after he tells each of these two stories? They’re near echoes of each other in verses seven and ten: “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance…Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." Joy…in heaven…in the presence of the angels of God…over one sinner? Joy…over finding one of those people? The joy doesn’t come from what we deem to be an adequate response. A shepherd doesn’t rejoice over finding one sheep because all the people on the village think that one sheep is wonderful. A woman doesn’t rejoice over finding her lost coin because all of her friends and neighbors thought that that coin was so marvelous. Just so, the joy in heaven doesn’t come from some idea we have of who is or isn’t worthy of such divine celebration. A shepherd rejoices at finding his lost sheep because that shepherd loved that sheep, because he deemed it worthy of his joy. A woman rejoices at finding her lost coin because that woman valued that coin so highly and wished to share her joy in finding it with all who would join with her in celebrating. Just so, the joy in the presence of the angels of God in heaven comes from that God loving those sinners and God rejoices when those sinner—us, all of us—are found in the saving grace of his love and forgiveness.

            While we may choose to ignore the refuse found rattling around in the cardboard of this life’s lost-and-found box, while we may even find ourselves at times looked over, forgotten, and abandoned by others, God rejoices when we are found. God celebrates those moments when the “tax collectors and sinners” of our world, those people, are found trusting in his love and setting out to follow his Son, Jesus. There is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God in heaven when those of us who have been lost, forgotten, broken, and abandoned are found, forgiven, restored, and made whole in the love of Christ, when we are rescued from the “lost-and-found.”

            Let us seek to welcome those into our lives that the rest of the world has left behind and forgotten. Let us rejoice over those who repent and turn our lives over to the One who deems us worthy of His joy. Let us rejoice with the angels in the presence of God in heaven today, for Christ has rescued us all from the “lost-and-found.”

Let us pray… 

Mustard Seeds and Yeast

Luke 13:18-21

18 He said therefore, "What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? 19 It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches." 20 And again he said, "To what should I compare the kingdom of God? 21 It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."

            She could tell you more about the cracks in her floor than the contents of her shelves. The pavement of the roads she walked each day she knew like the back of her hand. When someone called her name or shouted for her attention, the pain that racked her body was so intense she could only lift her head and wave in the general direction of the voice she heard. She was used to it though. For nearly two decades she lived with the crippling spirit in her body. For eighteen years she suffered from a pain so intense she could not stand to straighten herself. One would think after living with such an ailment, such pain for so long that she would have grown used to it, that she would have grown accustomed to a life lived with a bent back caused by what those in her day clearly would have determined to be a bad spirit. Perhaps, after eighteen long years, she had grown used to it.

            To us, this woman is a bit of an enigma. Luke simply introduces her in the thirteenth chapter of his gospel as a woman who just appeared. She didn’t have a memorable name. She didn’t have a prolonged conversation with Jesus like the “woman at the well” in the fourth gospel. She wasn’t a woman who made a grand gesture like that woman with the alabaster jar. No, it seems Luke can’t recall much about this crippled woman, and the other gospels don’t seem to remember her at all. Luke gives us so little information about her, yet when Jesus saw her (it says in verse 12), “he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’” This woman, this crippled woman, who appears out of nowhere, hears Jesus call to her, and perhaps for the first time in ages she hears a voice that calls to her without shouting words of complaint and precaution for the woman who likely had difficulty navigating the course of her walk while stooped over. She heard a voice calling her to come nearer, a voice that proclaimed freedom from that the crippling spirit that had haunted her for nearly twenty years. The only other thing Luke tells us about this woman is that, “When [Jesus] laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.” She was healed; she could stand up straight and view the world from a new perspective, without pain. Her immediate response was praise, recognizing the source of her newfound freedom from pain.

            Praise, however, wasn’t the response from everyone who witnessed what Jesus had done for this woman. Luke tells us in verse 14: “But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, ‘There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.’" You see, while to you and me it seems Jesus had done something wonderful in healing this woman’s back, setting her free from the pain of her ailment, but to the leader of the synagogue (and any well-meaning, conservative Jew of the day) Jesus had broken one of the commandments—one of the TEN commandments: Jesus, by healing this woman, worked on the Sabbath. This was a particularly awful commandment to break as there were all sorts of rules and regulations concerning the Sabbath and what kinds of things constituted work. Healing and curing ailments just happened to be on the list of prohibited practices considered work.

            Of course, Jesus (as he always did) had a reasonable response for those who were less than thrilled with his work on that Sabbath day in the synagogue in verses 15 and 16: “But the Lord answered him and said, ‘You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?’” In other words, Jesus was asking why they felt like it was good and proper to care for their livestock on the Sabbath, but not this suffering woman (a Jewish woman no less!). Now, it would be easy to let this little story about Jesus healing this unnamed woman stand on its own. After all, it is a powerful story about how Jesus had the power to heal a woman who had been afflicted for so long, and it’s a great story about one recognizing the source of her healing, and it’s a great lesson in understanding the heart of the law and the divine call to love one’s neighbor. Those are indeed all good things to take away from this story, yet today our focus isn’t directly on the actions in this story. I want to draw our attention today to the two little parables Jesus tells immediately following this story, because I believe there is a very good reason Luke is the only one of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) to include this story and follow it with these parables.

             To introduce these two short parables, Jesus asks in verses 18 and 20, "What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it?...To what should I compare the kingdom of God?” He follows this controversial, Sabbath day healing with two parables describing the kingdom of God, two parables about mustard seeds and yeast. Jesus says in verse 19, “[the kingdom] is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches." Now, any of you who’ve spent any amount of time around the Bible or maybe even meandered into a Christian bookstore have likely heard of the mustard seed. It is the smallest of all seeds, yet it has the potential to grow as high as ten feet![1] If the wonder a tiny mustard seed growing into a tree doesn’t wow you, then consider Jesus’ second parable in verse 21: “[the kingdom] is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened." Yeast is a single-celled organism (living things can’t get any smaller!), yet it only takes a small amount to leaven fifty pounds of flour![2]

            Now, perhaps it may be obvious that these are two parables about incredibly small, seemingly insignificant things that have a way of transforming into something large and dynamic, but think back to the story Luke tells us just before Jesus gives us these two parables. We cannot deny they are related somehow, because Luke’s language suggests that Jesus tells these two parables in connection with the Sabbath day healing of this woman (in verse 18 Luke tells us that Jesus “said therefore” implying a connection to what has just taken place—the healing of the crippled woman). Mustard seeds are incredibly small; they could be mistaken for bits of dust and debris and swept out the door with the rest of the day’s refuse. Yeast is so small one could easily mistake it for dust. This woman who Luke tells us just appeared at the synagogue that day was perhaps overlooked all those eighteen years she lived with the pain of her ailment; perhaps her presence in her community was small, easily mistaken for the refuse of those branded unclean and cursed.

            Perhaps Jesus’ action of healing this woman in that synagogue that Sabbath day could have been seen as otherwise small, an ordinary breaking of the Sabbath law by an unusual prophet. Perhaps there were many who claimed to heal, many who broke the command forbidding work on the Sabbath. But in that singular instance, in that solitary moment when Jesus freed an unknown woman from her pain, we witness the planting of the mustard seed. In an event of such seemingly small proportions that most of the cast goes unnamed and the other gospel witnesses seem to have forgotten, we see the yeast mixed in the flour. For all throughout Jesus’ ministry we see events like these. All throughout the history of Christ’s Church we witness these small miracles.

It is in these otherwise small events that we see the kingdom of God grow and blossom in our midst. So often we look for God’s kingdom in the big, the loud, the bright, and the glorious. So often we tend to overlook the small ways Christ calls us to come and follow him, Like the leader of the synagogue, we look for God in what we have judged to be big enough for him, in the things we feel are worthy of God’s kingdom work. Like the woman with the crippling spirit, there are opportunities to see God’s kingdom grow that we may otherwise overlook because we think it’s not the right time or place. We deem them to be like the mustard seed, like the yeast, too small to be of any real use now. Yet Jesus’ words in these parables about mustard seeds and yeast show us that God’s kingdom is indeed found in those things we may deem too small. God’s kingdom is indeed found in the unnamed and the easily passed over. God’s kingdom is right before us, like a mustard seed ready to burst forth in unexpected growth, like yeast mixed in with flour spreading and growing beyond anything we can imagine.

God’s kingdom is moving, and he calls each of us to join in the movement, but will you recognize those opportunities for the kingdom’s work? Will you pass over what God may be calling you to because you see it as too small or not worth your time? Will you ignore the small ways God invites you into the work of his kingdom? Will you choose this day to be a part of the ever-growing and ever-expanding kingdom of God, or do you find it too small, too insignificant for your time and your life?

Let us pray…

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[1] Darrel L. Bock, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Luke. P.1225

[2] Ibid., P. 1228.

The Unstoppable Kingdom

Mark 4:26-29

26 He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come."

            Time. We measure it in millennia, centuries, decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds, and nanoseconds (that’s one-billionth of a second). We can capture events in time with print, pictures, and film. We can keep track of time with wristwatches, clocks, and calendars. We can even observe the effects of time as we gaze up into the night sky or down into the deepest places of our planet. Yet for all the ways we can track, observe, and experience time we cannot stop it. Time marches on whether we like it or not, and it marches at its own pace whether we like it or not.

            When I reflect on my own life I can see the reality of time’s inability to be slowed, quickened, or captured. When I was in elementary school, I wanted time to speed up. I couldn’t wait to go to high school, where we got to change classes and put our books in lockers. When I was in high school, I couldn’t wait to turn sixteen so I could get my driver’s license, get a job, and buy a car;  after I got my car, graduation and the real world couldn’t come fast enough. In college, I couldn’t wait to graduate, so I could get married and start seminary. Now, here I am, married for six years, three years out of seminary, quickly approaching my thirtieth birthday, and at times I find myself wishing I could wind back the clock, slow down time or reverse, to go back to those days of regulated nap times, when paying the bills was someone else’s responsibility, and all I had to worry about was whether or not there were marshmallows in my breakfast cereal!

            On the other hand, I think we all experience those days when we wish five o’clock would arrive a little sooner, those weeks when we wish Friday would hurry up and get here, or those vacations when we pray for time to slow to a crawl so we can see every site or soak up more sun while we lounge in allowed laziness. But alas, we are not masters of time, for time continues to grind on without our assistance or approval. In a word, time is unstoppable.

            Now, perhaps that’s somewhat of a discouraging thought for you, but may I suggest that simply because something is unstoppable that does not mean that it isn’t beneficial; just because we are unable to completely control something doesn’t mean that it’s all bad.

            Take, for instance, the way children grow. How many of you parents have ever said something like this about your children: “I wish they would just stay this age and not turn into teenagers”? Or how many of you have ever sent your child out of the house for his or her first date, afraid of what trouble the changing effects of time and biology may lead to? Inside the door frame of my grandmother’s pantry there are painted over scratches and faded pencil marks that all continue halfway up the length of the jamb. Each mark tells how tall my cousins and I were at certain points in our childhood, but none of those marks gets shorter. Just as time’s passing is relentlessly unstoppable, so is the growth of our children. Try as we might to slow it down, stop it, or even reverse it, they grow up whether we like it or not. It is unstoppable.

            Like the passing of time or the growth of children, today Jesus tells us a story about the way in which a seed grows. Once it is sown in the good soil (reminding us perhaps of the story we heard from Jesus a couple of weeks ago), nature takes over and the seed in the ground germinates. Once the first, frail leaf of the plant breaks through the darkness beneath the dirt into the warm light of the daytime sun, the great miracle we call photosynthesis takes over as the plant absorbs sunlight and nutrients from the soil to grow taller. Jesus describes the action of the growing seed in verse 28: “first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.” What really puts the point on the parable, however, is what Jesus says at the beginning of that same verse: “The earth produces of itself…” The earth is producing the growth, not any action of the scarcely mentioned one who scattered the seed. In this story, the understanding here is that the seed grows from the earth on its own, in its own time, in its own way—whether the farmer likes it or not.

It’s actually quite fascinating to think about how much faith it took for one to grow something in Jesus’ day. Today, we genetically manipulate seeds to produce bigger fruits or greater yields. We scientifically craft their DNA so that they can resist pesticides and herbicides and grow in harsh weather conditions. In the first century, however, the understanding of why and how plants grew was left to little more than experience and faith, as Jesus says in verse 27 “the seed would sprout and grow, [the sower] does not know how.” So a farmer planted seed in his field, prayed, and waited for the earth [to] produce of itself. Once a plant started to grow, there was no stopping it, no reversing its growth because the season wasn’t right or the farmer wasn’t ready. When a crop began to grow, the farmer had no choice but to see it through to harvest. He couldn’t slow it down or halt its growth—in a word, it was unstoppable. Jesus tells this story about the unstoppable growth of this seed for the same reason he tells many of his stories, in order to describe the kingdom of God. He says in verse 26, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground…” The kingdom of God is like the growth of this seed—once it starts, its growth is unstoppable.

But this isn’t the easiest of concepts for us to understand. For something to be unstoppable means it’s out of our control, and we want control—we need control. We like being able to control when something begins and when it ends. We like being able to make our own schedules and live by our own rules. Do you realize we now live in a world where a person can pause live television, grow a “fresh” tomato in the dead of winter, remotely start the engine in his or her car, and manipulate the temperature and humidity in his or her house from a different country with nothing more than a smartphone carried in a pocket?! Our powers of control are only increasing, so a story from Jesus about an uncontrollable movement, and uncontrollable kingdom might not sit that well with us. If we can’t control it, we often don’t want it.

There are exceptions of course. For example, I remember watching the first infomercial for the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ in my grandmother’s living room nearly a decade ago. Today, according to the Ronco website, the company sells thousands of those machines every week.[1] What is the claim about this machine that makes it such an enormous seller? Ron claims you can “set it and forget it!” Nothing to control; just set the dial and forget all about it until it’s ready. The machine controls itself. To tell you the truth, that’s one of the things I like about the automatic transmission in my truck; I don’t have to manually select gears in order to accelerate or take a steep incline on the road. I just drop the transmission into drive and I’m on my way. And I’m sure many of us can testify to how convenient it is when our banks or credit card companies have some sort of automatic bill pay that handles paying all our bills on time each and every month. It’s one less thing to worry about, one less thing to control. I guess sometimes it’s nice when things are out of our control; we just like to call them “automatic.”

“Automatic,” however, still carries with it a sense of control (we can always cancel online payments and put the car in park). The kingdom of God, however, doesn’t work like that; it doesn’t begin and end simply because we want it to. No, the kingdom of God, like a seed growing up from the ground, is unstoppable once it starts—and the reality is it has already begun. Jesus’ first words in Mark’s gospel are found in chapter one, verse fifteen, and with Mark’s first recorded words of Christ we hear him proclaim "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." The kingdom of God is at hand, and all throughout Mark’s gospel we hear of how unstoppable its growth is as Jesus gathers followers on his way to the cross and the ultimate expression of the kingdom’s unstoppable power as even the power of death could not hold it back—the grave could not stop it!

In the words of Jesus, “the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.” It has started and it cannot be slowed or stopped, for it grows by the power of God and the moving of the Holy Spirit. The kingdom of God is here, growing among us even now, so each of us is faced with a decision: will we join the growing kingdom, or will we let it pass us by? We cannot slow it. We cannot stop it. We can only choose to join it or ignore it. For the kingdom of God is unstoppable; Christ’s reign as king and lord is unstoppable, God’s will to reconcile us unto himself is unstoppable. Through faith in Christ we join in this unstoppable kingdom, for just as the seed grows and the earth produces of itself, the kingdom grows and produces of itself.

Yet there is coming a day when the fullness of God’s kingdom will be realized, “when the grain [will be] ripe” and “the harvest [will] come." There is coming a day when God will be fully known, and as the apostle Paul says in his letter to the Romans: "As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God." So it seems that even our eternal recognition of the kingdom is unstoppable. However, the decision still remains: will you recognize the unstoppable power of the God’s kingdom present among us even now, or will you continue to ignore its presence, hoping to ignore whatever work the Holy Spirit may be working in your own life?

The unstoppable Kingdom of God is at hand. It is here among us today. It is as a seed scattered on the ground, which grows in a mysterious and unstoppable way, and the time for its harvest, its fulfillment, is coming. Will you join this kingdom now, giving your life and trust to its king, Jesus the Christ?

Let us pray…

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[1] https://www.ronco.com/

Stories of Change

Matthew 13:44-53

44 "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 45 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; 46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. 47 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; 48 when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. 49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 51 "Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes." 52 And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old." 53 When Jesus had finished these parables, he left that place.

Last month, The Atlantic magazine’s website, TheAtlaticWire.com, published an article titled “A Dictionary of Despicable Words.”[1] Picked from various website comments, facebook posts, and tweets, this dictionary consists of words that many people feel are abused, misused, or overused. The list of words found in this dictionary include artisanal, damp, epic, firstly, hipster, literally, moist (which is the least favorite word of my college roommate), troll, um, winningest. Missing from the list, however, is a word I personally cannot stand, yummy. It’s not that I don’t like the people who use the word (or any of its various forms), there’s just something about that word I find, well…despicable. It’s a word I don’t like to use, a word that sort of makes my skin crawl.

Of course, it seems that in the life of many congregations there is one word in particular that is often seen as despicable. It is a word that many church folks fear—it can give them a bad case of indigestion or perhaps make them a bit light-headed. It’s a word so common outside the walls of steepled-sanctuaries, however, that it can easily go unnoticed as just a part of everyday conversation, yet it is a word that can turn a calm, quiet business meeting into a hurricane of out-of-control emotions and can cause even the most saintly of souls to drop their attitudes of civility in the midst of the people of God. It is a word that can cause such frustration in the midst of many congregations that church buildings sit empty on account of this word. Now, maybe it’s more accurate to say that the effects of this word are not the fault of the word itself but the reactions of those who hear this word. The reactions to this single word can cause such trauma and such drama in the hearts, minds, and spirits of many a church member that part of me hesitates to say it even now in this room, so if you’re a bit worried about what effect this word may have on you, now is the time to cover your ears. What is this word that can cause such tremors in the lives of so many congregations? It is a simple, six-letter word: change.

Are you still with me? (If the person sitting beside happened to cover his or her ears you can nudge them now and tell them it’ll be alright.) Yes, change is a word, an idea, which causes so much trouble in the life of many congregations. Don’t believe me? Well then just ask any pastor who decided to cancel Sunday evening worship services because no one was showing up, or ask the music minister who decided to include an acoustic guitar, an electric bass, and a drum set in the morning worship service. Ask the minister who made the suggestion to put a screen and projector in the sanctuary or the publishing house that changed the format of their Sunday School literature. They’ll all tell you, change can be an awfully powerful word when spoken in the midst of many a congregation.

But why? Why is it that so many church people and the congregations of which they are a part flinch at the idea of change? I have a theory. I think it’s because change often means giving something up and most of the time the something we’re asked to give up isn’t necessarily something we’re willing to give up. It’s something that makes us comfortable, something that helps us feel at ease about the approach to faith we have chosen to take. That something that we’re often asked to change is one of the few things we can hold on to from the so-called “good ole days.” Change often asks us to give up something—or in the most extreme cases, everything—in order to take up something else, something different. It is beyond strange to me that so many congregations, so many “good, Christian people,” fear change. After all, aren’t we called by Christ to change ourselves?

I think theses short “Jesus stories” (parables) we’ve heard here today are in fact stories about change. They are stories that speak about the most drastic kind of change—change that calls us to give up everything in order to take up one thing.

Look again at the first of these stories Jesus tells in verse 44: "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” According to John Claypool, this story isn’t nearly as far-fetched as we might believe today.[2] During the generations of wars fought between the superpowers of the Ancient Near East all over the Judean landscape, residents of that land with any belongings of value would bury their treasure beneath the earth to protect it from pillaging hordes. However, many times those who buried their treasures were often killed, imprisoned, or exiled, never to return to uncover their belongings. Therefore, it wasn’t all that uncommon for a farmer to be plowing along and suddenly bang the blade of his plow on some long forgotten treasure. It’s quite likely that there were those in the crowd around Jesus who had themselves found some buried trinkets or who knew someone who had.

In this story, Jesus tells of a man who finds a treasure hidden in a field, perhaps while on a stroll through the countryside or while working in the garden of his superior. When this man discovers this treasure, he makes what comes to be an enormous judgment call: he decides this treasure that he has stumbled upon is so valuable, that he hides the treasure in the field, returns home, posts his belongings on Craigslist, EBay, and Amazon, holds a yard sale, and sells his last possessions to the pawn shop down the street in order to buy that field where he found the treasure. In Jesus’ words, he “sells all that he has and buys that field.” Talk about a change! The man in Jesus’ story went from his normal, comfortable life with his home and all his belongings to only owning a patch of dirt with a treasure he found to be worth more than all he possessed before. He is willing to give up all that he has, willing to accept the change that comes with buying the field and the treasure hidden in it.

The second of Jesus’ stories we’ve heard today is quite similar. In verses 45 and 46 Jesus says, "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.” The only noticeable difference between the man in the first story and this merchant in this story is that this merchant is actually out searching for something. Jesus says he was “in search of fine pearls” and when he found one—just one—of such a great value, like the man from Jesus’ first story “he went and sold all that he had and bought it.” He deemed this pearl to be perfect and of such great value that he was willing to sell all that he had—to change his whole life—in order to posses this perfect pearl.

Why were these two individuals in Jesus’ stories willing to change their entire lives for the purchase of a single field and a solitary pearl? What motivates any of us to take the kind of risks that have the potential to change our lives? What is truly powerful enough to cause us to make decisions that appear foolish and downright irresponsible? It is the belief in the kind of change that leaves us better than we were before. It is the belief that the risk is worth taking—a belief so strong that the notion of risk no longer exists. And in the end, it’s ultimately a matter of judgment. That’s where we hear Jesus’ third story.

In verses 47 and 48 Jesus says: "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.” In this short parable, Jesus describes the all too familiar actions of the ancient, Judean fishermen. They would row out into the water or stand on the bank, cast out a great net, and when it was full, haul the net to the shore to sort out the good, marketable fish from those that were too small to sell. The vocation of fisherman was not simply one of brute strength and physical ability; it also involved the ability to judge what was valuable and what was worthless. A great haul of worthless fish was a wasted cast of the net, but a net filled with fewer, valuable fish, could put change in their pockets and bring change to their lives.

But Jesus doesn’t just leave us with this image of the fisherman for us to contemplate its meaning. No, instead he offers an explanation in verses 49 and 50: “So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Apparently, fishermen, pearl merchants, and treasure hunters aren’t the only ones who make decisions of change! Jesus gives us a look at the “end of the age” and how it is not unlike the practice of the fisherman—it will be a time of judging evil from righteous, a time of eternal change no doubt!

Now, I have to be honest with you. I cannot claim with the certainty of those in verse 51 that I have understood all of this that Jesus has said here in these stories. I do, however, find his last story in our passage today to be a bit out of place; it doesn’t really seem to make sense to include it with these previous stories. But then again…maybe it does make sense. Hear it again from verse 52: "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old." At first, this saying seems a bit odd, with the mention of a “scribe who has been trained for the kingdom,” yet here again we are faced with a story that is actually about judgment and change.

On the far, back corner of my uncle’s house in Enterprise there sits an old, cinderblock house. Once upon a time, that house was the meeting place for a local motorcycle gang, but my granddad (we called him “Pa”) bought it and eventually sold it (or gave it) to my uncle. After Pa died in 1994, that block house became a place to store all his old radio equipment, junk parts from boats, cars, and lawnmowers, and even a few bottles of homemade wine. Eleven years later, when my grandmother (we called her “Ma”) died, my mom, aunt, and uncles sold her house and put the rest of her belongings in that old, block house.

A few years went by, and my uncle decided to clean out that block house and sell what things could be sold and give away the rest. My sister and mother called me while I was at school. You see, my uncle thought it might be better to clear out all the old, worthless junk in that house so that it could be used for something, but there were two or three in my family who wanted to hold on to those old, rotting and rusting belongings. Somehow, they felt that if they could just hold on to an old answering machine, or a few cheap plates that they could live in the past, that they could hold on to something old (even if it was kept in a drafty, cinderblock house on the other side of town). My uncle brought out from that house everything that was old and reminded my family of the past, but there was nothing new at all.

I’ve seen the same thing happen when church attics or basements are cleaned out. Old hymnbooks, rotting and crawling with silverfish, are put in boxes and kept to take up space because some patriarch from another century donated those hymnbooks. Antiquated programs continue to put a strain on the church budget and volunteers simply because there was once a time (several decades in the past) when such programs would bring dozens of people to church. Churches and church people have a strange tendency to bring only the old treasure out of their houses, ignoring the possibilities of the new.

There again, we see that even this simple parable is a story of change, for the "the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” still possesses the treasures of the past, yet he has had to make room for the new; he has had to judge what is better—to change and take on what is new, or cling only to the old treasures.

You and I are faced today and everyday with the reality that being a follower of Christ, or as he put it himself a “scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven,” means we are called to change. However, we do not change simply for the sake of change, but like that man who stumbled upon a hidden treasure, that merchant in search of the perfect pearl, or those fishermen sorting their catch on the shore, we change because we know that whatever we leave behind, whatever we may cast aside, can never compare to the grace of God and the love of Christ. We change because we believe that the dominion of Jesus is far greater than any kingdom we could ever create for ourselves. We change because we trust that Christ is far greater than anything we have, have ever had, or ever will possess. We change, because if we hold fast to where we are the kingdom of God will pass us by.

So, brothers and sisters do not fear the word change. Do not be afraid to leave everything behind, all that you are and all that you have, to come and follow Jesus, because that change that is to come—that change that is coming even now—is greater than anything you could ever imagine.

Let us pray…

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[1] http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/08/dictionary-despicable-words/55464/

[2] See Claypool’s sermon on this parable in his book, Stories Jesus Still Tells. 

Parable of the Soils

Mark 4:1-20

1 Again he began to teach beside the sea. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the sea and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. 2 He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: 3 "Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. 6 And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. 8 Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold." 9 And he said, "Let anyone with ears to hear listen!" 10 When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. 11 And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; 12 in order that ‘they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.'" 13 And he said to them, "Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? 14 The sower sows the word. 15 These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. 16 And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. 17 But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. 18 And others are those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, 19 but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing. 20 And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold."

            Perhaps this is a bit of a confession (though one I am sure many of you can join me in confessing), but sometimes I have a great tendency to hear without listening. That is to say sound waves strike my eardrum, vibrate all those tiny bones in my inner ear, get interpreted by my brain into bits of neurological information, that I then understand as sounds, but I don’t always pay attention to those sounds or allow them to actually register as something important in my mind. I hear, but I don’t always listen. To perhaps put it another way, hearing is a passive act, while listening is active.

Many (if not all) of you can relate in one way or another I’m sure. I mean, have you ever gotten a phone call from someone, and after about the first sixty seconds you enter into this patterned response of “Yeah…mmhmm…I know…that’s right…”? Or what about those of you who can recall your days in high school or college, those days when you would sit at the back of the room while your teacher droned on and on about the actions of chromosomes during cellular mitosis or how the Prussian Empire dominated Eastern Europe? Surely you can remember hearing something like that at one time or another, but did you really listen?

            Now, I don’t mean to make too much of the difference between hearing and listening, but I think the passage we’ve heard here today from Mark is filled with words from Jesus that certainly call us to listen (To be fair, the difference between “hear” and “listen” is not necessarily there in the Koine Greek of Mark). This is, however, in a very real way, a parable about listening, so it’s no surprise to me that Jesus begins this parable in verse three with the imperative “Listen!” and ends it in verse nine  with the declaration “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!" This isn’t just a nice story Jesus tells to pass the time on the long, hot roads of ancient Judea. No, this is a story that requires our listening. It is a story about how we listen.

            Now, in verse three Jesus begins telling this story by saying, “A sower went out to sow.” Often we’ve heard this parable referred to as “the parable of the sower,” but to be fair, Jesus doesn’t actually give the sower top billing; the sower is mentioned only as a necessary element in this story, as the one who sows the seed. Then we are told about the seed in verses three through eight. The sower sows this seed (think of someone simply taking handfuls of seeds and tossing them about as she or he walks around the field), and some of it falls on the well-worn path, some on the rock-rutted dirt, some in the briar patch, and some on the good soil. In all of that sowing the seed remains the same. Jesus tells us in verse 14 that the seed is “the word.” Now, please don’t misunderstand that phrase, “the word” to mean the whole of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments (especially the Authorized, 1611 KJV). No, when Jesus says that the seed is “the word” he uses the word logos which perhaps more directly means “message.” Therefore, the seed the sower sows in the parable is the message from God, the Good News, the Gospel, and while the word—this seed—is of great importance, it isn’t the primary focus of Jesus’ story. It’s the soils.  Jesus wants his listeners to focus their attention on the soils and how they received the seed. Thus, it is better to call this “the parable of the soils.” So let’s listen to what Jesus has to say about each of these soils.

            In verse four, he says “as [the sower] sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up.” Then Jesus explains in verse fifteen: “These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them.” It’s important to pause here and understand that throughout all of the gospels that contain his parables (that is Matthew, Mark, and Luke) Jesus doesn’t really take the time to explain them. This parable is an exception. Now, notice what Jesus says about those who are like the path: “when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them.” In other words, those who hear the message and quickly dismiss it, cast it aside, or ignore it altogether, are like the path where the seed was sown—such seed doesn’t even have a chance to begin to grow.

            I want to make a brief observation here if I may: a path is not worn smooth simply by the passage of time or the existence of the ground—it must be worn down and packed smooth by the actions of those whose feet tread upon it. So, before we are ready to cast judgment and perhaps withhold the word from those who are quick to dismiss it, perhaps we ought to take into account that those who quickly dismiss the Good News—those who are like the path where the seed is sown—are those who have been trampled upon and walked all over by the rest of the world, and there’s an awful good chance they have been worn smooth by the treading feet of those who claim to sow the seed. Yes, the seed, the word, doesn’t have a chance to take root and flourish, but maybe it’s because the path has been packed down by the feet of bad experiences and hypocrisy.

            Now, in verses five and six, Jesus continues to tell the story: “Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away.” He goes on to explain this part of the story in verses sixteen and seventeen: “And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away.” Any one of us who has ever gone on a short-term mission trip, chaperoned a youth camp, or sat in the sweltering summer heat beneath a revival tent know the truth of this soil all too well. There are those who go away for a while, take an intentional time away from the cares of the world in order to focus on things spiritual, and upon their return, they seek to set the world on fire with the Good News of the gospel. Yet, when the “new” wears off and suddenly their renewed devotion to God interferes with their comfort they soon return to the way things were—the way things had always been.

            Sometimes we call these people who revert back to their old, comfortable ways “backsliders,” or we cast our judgment on those who seem to let go of their faith as quickly as they received it, those who reject the call of discipleship before the baptismal waters have dried from their skin. However, I can’t help but notice how quickly those of us who call ourselves the Church do the same thing. We reject the difficult decisions of ministry in order to stay in a place of comfort and familiarity. I can’t help but notice how quickly believers in this country seek to justify their comfort and complacency with societal norms in baptized language. Perhaps our own soil is a bit rockier than we’d care to confess.

            But then there are, after all, the thorns, the briar patch. I have to tell you, I hate thorns and briars. I spent a measurable amount of time as a kid picking sand briars out of my socks and shoes, and I ruined numerous t-shirts snagging them on thorn vines and bushes. Jesus speaks about thorns in this parable in verses seven then in verses eighteen and nineteen: “Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain…And others are those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing.”

            Of all the soils in this parable, I think the thorny soil may be the most tragic (if soil can be tragic). It’s so like the good soil: thorns have already taken root in it and seem to have flourished, yet this thorny soil is so overrun with thorns that they choke out the seed—the seed the sower would have no doubt wished to grow instead of the thorns. Is it no different with us? We may make time on a Sunday morning to hear the word, yet when the time for this small compartment of our lives has expired we turn our attention to other things; we have “bigger fish to fry” we tell ourselves. The cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things crowd our schedules, crowd our thoughts, crowd our spirits, and while we may still have a stalk of faith shooting up from the thorns and briars of our lives, there is no fruit. We make time to hear the word, but we just can’t listen over all the racket of our own busyness and our own desires. It’s here where I think we need to listen to the rest of Jesus’ story as he tells about the good soil.

            In verse eight Jesus wraps up his parable: “Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold." The wonderful thing about this soil is that there really isn’t anything wonderful about it at all. In fact, it just does exactly what it is supposed to do; the thorn-free, rock-less, un-trodden soil receives the seed and produces a good to great crop (thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold would have been considered good to great for a crop of grain, not miraculous). With that in mind, listen again to Jesus’ explanation of this soil in verse twenty: “And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold."

            There is nothing particularly special about this “good soil” in the parable. There’s no added fertilizer, no Miracle-Gro, no special chemistry; it’s simply free from those things that prevented the seed—the word—from producing in the other soils. And I believe that’s one of the lessons we ought to take away from this parable. Those who hear the word and accept it are not created special or different from those who do not. Those who hear the Good News and accept it are not any different in what they are than those who dismiss the word, those who recant under the slightest of discomfort, or those who allow the distractions of the world to choke it out. No, what is different is that the good soil is free of those things that prevent the word from taking root, growing, and (most of all) bearing fruit. So may we be mindful when we seek to share the message of God’s kingdom with others; may we be mindful that there are those who have been trampled over by so many things (even those who claim to share the gospel); may we be mindful that there are those who are not ready to take up their cross; may we be mindful that there are those who are too caught up in the distractions of the world and their own desires; and most of all, may we be mindful that we are no different.

            Let us work to be the good soil. Let us bring forth the fruit of God’s kingdom. Let us work to tread lightly upon the soil, ridding it of rocks and thorns, so that we may look forward to that day when the Good News will not only be heard by all, but all will listen and bear fruit for the kingdom. May we be people who listen and bear fruit, even now.

Let us pray…