Let the Field Lay Fallow

Matthew 13:1-23
Click Here For Sermon Audio
One of the greatest mysteries of all time is how a seed grows. I'm sure biologists have this one almost figured out. You take a seed put it in a moist environment. The outer shell begins to decompose and lets off gases which when coupled with moisture produce some sort of enzymatic reaction in the seed and it shoots out something called a “radical” which in turn becomes a root. Then a sprout develops and it consumes the seed transforming into a plant that grows in astronomical proportion to what the seed was and then, in its time, it fruits and produces more seeds.

The dandelion is one of the most fantastic examples of this mystery. The proficiency and shear power of its growth is amazing. They will mass reproduce no matter the conditions. I remember a few years back at my last church. We paved the parking lot and the next Spring in the middle of the parking lot dandelion plants began to grow. They had pushed through several inches of compacted gravel and roughly three inches of compacted asphalt. That’s amazing.

Here's some science for you. The first law of thermodynamics is that “energy may be transformed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed.” That’s basically saying that when we burn a piece of wood, though the wood gets reduced to ashes the energy that was latent in it became heat and gases and got absorbed back into the environ. If you apply that law to dandelion seeds, it becomes mind boggling that in those tiny little seeds that parachute around in spring and summer there lies dormant enough power to grow a plant through asphalt. That's phenomenal. If someone could figure out how to convert the energy latent in a dandelion seed into electricity, the world’s need for power would disappear.

I think Jesus himself was quite impressed with the mystery of seeds and how they grow. If you consider the latent power in a small seed and it’s ability to transform and grow into a plant that will in the end produce an astounding number of more seeds, it is no wonder that Jesus compared the word of the kingdom of heaven to a small unassumingly insignificant seed. Words have power similar to that of seeds.

Words are very powerful things that should not be underestimated. Words bring forth a response. Cry “help” and people will come. Words have creative powers. Tell a child she’s brilliant and brave and she will be the first to step on Mars, but call her stupid she’ll settle for things beneath her. With words we change the course of history. They should never be underestimated.

This idea of the power of a word was especially true when it concerned God’s words. The prophet Isaiah quotes God as saying: “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose.“ God’s words are as sure and as effective as watering the soil causes plants to sprout, grow, and bear fruit.

In this parable, The Parable of the Sower, Jesus indicates that the word of the kingdom of Heaven is like a seed and its energy, its power to grow. Jesus, God the Son become human, is the word of the Kingdom of Heaven and like a seed he will grow. Latent in him is the power of God’s very self and his love for his creation. Jesus is the seed of the word the kingdom of God, the seed who fell into the ground and died and was raised, who grew a root and a sprout and who is being transformed into new humanity filled with the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is working in people just like you and me and congregations just like ours right now all over the world transforming us to be more like Jesus. He will work until the end, the day when the great harvest of the New Creation happens and all things are made new.

Well, that’s some grand theology there. Jesus being a seed and having all that power to grow and all but, it doesn’t necessarily describe what’s going on in the fields these days. There seems to be a couple of scenarios left out of the parable. For example, this has been a tough year for farmers. It’s rained here, and it’s rained there, but for so many farmers around here due to no fault of their own there wasn’t enough at the right time and now the moisture is too high for harvesting…and we won’t talk about beef prices. For farmers, so much is just simply up to God. There was nothing wrong with soil, nothing wrong with the seed, nothing wrong with the farmer. It just seems like God wasn’t providing rain.

In the Parable of the Sower the Sower is very wasteful. He throws seed everywhere regardless of the soil’s ability to yield crop. It’s like he’s sowing dandelion rather than beans and corn. Yet, regardless of the Sower’s poor method God comes through. With the exception of the seed sown on the path that never had a chance, all the other the seed assumingly gets what it needs to at least sprout and the seed that was wisely sown in good soil abundantly produced. But, this Parable has nothing to say about a Sower sowing in good soil, but the seed underyields for reasons that were in God’s hands to provide. But alas, as anxiety producing as this is in real life scenario’s, it doesn’t work as scenario for the kingdom of God for it would be saying that God the Father and the God the Spirit are not wholehearted in their support of the work of God the Son.

To explain myself, I brought up that scenario in an effort to express my own befuddlement and yours as well, I’m sure, as individual disciples and as a congregation as to why the seed we scatter just doesn’t yield. Speaking for myself as a minister, I get to sow the seed, proclaim the word on a weekly basis to what’s otherwise good soil. Over time I get to watch you folks grow. But, as we all have anxiously noticed, the good soil is becoming an ever smaller corner of our society in general. The work that I get to do out there falls on ambivalent soil and I’m sure you’ve noticed this for yourselves among your families and neighbours when the topic of faith comes up. If the seed we sow was cannabis, the people around us would readily accept it. But, the seed we sow is Jesus and the love of God…well, I guess it’s easiest to say the soil just isn’t ready for the seed.

For centuries the Christian church has played such a prominent role in the Canadian society. Initially, this land was a mission field but in time through the hard work of many faithful disciples of Jesus our society became a well-cultivated field which could be counted on to yield a good crop. But as happens in all fields over time, it suffered overuse and needs to lie fallow so that nature can restore it.

But now, Canadian Society is a mission field again. Just after World War II 67% of Canadians attended church once a week. In 2015, only 15% of Canadians of all faiths attended a weekly religious service, not just Christians. We’re only part of that 15%. On the 2005 census 33% of Canadians claimed no religious affiliation at all. The field has indeed been laying fallow. But, how much longer can this go on and what do we do in the meantime?

How long is up to God. But as far as what we do. Well, if we are good soil, then we need to keep being disciples of Jesus yielding seed for the day it comes time to sow it. We should stop being so amazed at and complaining about how unchristian our society has become over the last few decades and rather be quite a bit more amazed that Jesus has claimed us each as his own and is at work in each of us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has planted in us the powerful seed of a new way of being the church in Canada that will be able to root and sprout and grow and yield in the mission field that this nation now is. In the past whenever the Christ Jesus sent people in the power of the Holy Spirit into a mission field those he sent were well steeped in prayer and Bible Study. Being intentional about praying together and Bible study together is an absolute must for us. Let us devote ourselves the seed within us. Amen.

Seeing and Salvation

Mark 10:46-52
Click Here For Sermon Audio

Blind Bartimaeus is one of my favourite people in the Bible.  He is one of those insignificant characters in the Gospels who only show up once to show us what faith/faithfulness is.  We’d think that this would be the role the disciples play as the story unfolds, but oddly they only show us an incomplete faithfulness.  To their credit, they heard Jesus’ call and quite remarkably left everything behind to follow him yet they never quite seem to get who he is or what exactly is his mission of bringing in the Kingdom of God or their place in it.  But Bartimaeus, Blind Bartimaeus, the insignificant outcast, the annoying beggar on the side of the road…he gets it – Jesus and Jesus alone can bring “salvation” to him.  So, in desperation he goes all in making an annoying spectacle of himself.  He has faith.  He is faithful.

Well, since it is the case that when “faith” and “Jesus” meet up that “salvation” is the result, maybe we ought to take a moment and talk about what salvation is?  If someone were to ask us, “are you saved?” our first thought is likely going to be that “salvation” means going to heaven when we die due to believing that Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sins and we have been good and more or less faithful people.  But, is this definition of salvation really what the Bible says it is.  

Now, I’m going to say something that’s going to throw you back a bit and I encourage you to go and check for yourselves on this: the Bible never speaks of salvation as going to heaven when we die.  From the Old Testament right on through the New, the Bible presents salvation as the result of an act of God done to or for a person or even an entire people that brings to them healing, freedom from oppression, or even freedom from demonic possession in order to restore them to authentic human community.  Salvation is the result an act by God that either gives or restores life as God meant it to be.  

In the big picture, which involves what happens to us after death, salvation is not my soul going to heaven (though for a while we will in some form be with Christ), rather salvation is bodily Resurrection into Creation made new with a new heaven and a new earth. Humanity will be made new, immortal and imperishable and there will no longer be the disease of sin and death.  In that Day God himself will unhidden from us and we won’t hide ourselves fro him.  This big picture of salvation is what God has started in, through, and as Jesus Christ whom we shall see face to face and, this salvation is what God is working in us right now by the power of the Holy Spirit.  He is making us alive now in Christ that we might live in the Day as he lives.  That’s the big picture, but most frequently salvation as we find it in the Bible is a “right now” event in a person’s life in which God delivers us from what ails or oppresses us and he then brings us into the authentic loving community of his people and we know him more than we did before.

Blind Bartimaeus is a prime example of “faith” and “Jesus” meeting up and “salvation” being the result.  Though he was blind, Bartimaeus was “looking” for salvation, a real act of God in the “right now” of his life that would restore him to true life and he knew Jesus would give him that.  Bartimaeus was a blind beggar.  In his day any physical disability was seen as punishment from God for some great, secret sin.  People with disabilities were believed cursed and were ostracized especially by the religious and devout who refused to get involves with people with disabilities because they were afraid the cursedness might rub off on them.   And so, all they could do to live was beg. 

We find Bartimaeus sitting there at the roadside begging.  He could hear a crowd was passing by and when he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was par of it he began to cry out as loud as he could, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  The crowd, of course, got annoyed at him and commanded him, “Shut up!”  They were likely thinking “What right did this cursed blind beggar have to address the Messiah?”  But, Bartimaeus had faith, desperate faith.  He couldn’t see Jesus.  He couldn’t just go to him.  The only thing he could do on his part was to keep on shouting, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 

Well, Jesus heard him and stopped the roadshow and gave the command and it wasn’t to shut him up.  Jesus happens to respect desperation.  The command was “Call him!” and out went some good news to Bartimaeus, “Take courage!  Get up!  He is calling you!”  In a foreshadowing image of the Resurrection, Bartimaeus shed his cloak, the clothes of his old beggarly self, and jumped up from his beggar’s grave on the side of the road and…I like to imagine him here as alive in hope, exuding hope, as he sets off groping through the blurry darkness to find Jesus. 

Suddenly Bartimaeus heard a voice, “What do you want me to do?”  The last time Jesus asked that question it was to James and John when several days before they had come to Jesus asking him to do for them whatever they asked him to do.  For some odd reason they thought themselves worthy of sitting at Jesus the Messiah's right and left when he became king.  They were power seeking, trying to use Jesus as the means to fulfill their ambitions for power.  But not Bartimaeus, when Jesus asked him “What do you want me to do?” his request was simply for salvation, an act of God that would restore him to life.  “Let me see again!” he begs. 

Well, giving a blind man his sight back is something only God can do.  To have asked that Bartimaeus must have somehow saw that Jesus isn't simply Israel’s Messiah; he is somehow the Lord God of Israel.  He asked Jesus to do something only his God could do and there was more to it than simply seeing again.  It was more like:  “Give me back my sight so that I can live again.  Give me back my worth in peoples’ eyes.  Give me back my human dignity.  Restore me to community.  Have mercy on me.”  This act of grace is something only God could do. 

Jesus’ answer was brief and to the point, “Go!  Your faith has saved you.”  Immediately, Bartimaeus began to see again.  Bartimaeus was blind yet in faith he saw the faithfulness of God working in and through Jesus the Son of God and he trusted.  He regained his sight.  He regained his life.

There is one last lesson to learn from Bartimaeus.  An analogy is at play here in that “seeing” is life-giving faith and blindness is its opposite, which is hopelessness and fear.  It is likely that Bartimaeus was not blind from birth, but somehow he had lost his sight.  Yet, it was his physical blindness and the societal and spiritual consequences that set the stage Bartimaeus to “see”.  It was his blindness that caused him to look to Jesus.

Things happen in life that challenge our “sight” and make us blind – the death of parents, spouses, or children; marital infidelity and divorce; being rejected by our children; losing jobs; life threatening illness, addictions – these are things that take our lives away and can often wipe us clean of any sense of faith we may have had in God or ourselves.  They fill us with fear and hopelessness.  But the example of Blind Bartimaeus and his annoying and desperate faithfulness is the one we should hold on to.  In times of grief, anger, and shame, crying out to Jesus for salvation in the “right now” is our only hope because…seriously…when the time is right, he answers.  It might take days, months, even years of crying out but he answers and he saves us, he calls us to himself and he gives us “new sight”, a new way of seeing life as being filled with him.  Some of you have been through this “blindness” and know what I am saying is true and have reason to give thanks.  So give thanks, but also tell about it because there are people everywhere around you who need to know that there is hope.  Some of you are “blind” at this very moment.  Cry out.  Jesus does hear and will come to save.  Often, he doesn’t come immediately because he’s using the blindness and the crying out to heal even deeper hurts than the ones we are presently suffering.  Call out to Jesus and it is ok to be as desperately annoying about it as you can be.  Don’t let anyone try to silence you.  In time he will call you and you will be healed.  I’ve been there I know.  Be annoying.  Amen.

Downsizing

Mark 10:13-31
Click Here for Sermon Audio

For the most part, people are packrats.  We have a propensity to accumulate stuff.  We buy things we think we need.  Then they wind up in the basement, the garage, or the attic or the barn.  We will tuck stuff away in any available space imaginable.  But, judgement day comes - either we run out of space or have to move and we realize we have to get rid of the junk.  We have to downsize.  It’s a difficult thing to face because for some reason we tend to self-identify with our junk.  “I am the sum total of my junk.”  To get rid of any of our junk is to get rid of a cherished part of our self even if we did buy it off of the Home Shopping Network for $5.99 back in the ‘80’s.

Sometimes downsizing comes as a result of a moral crisis.  We begin to feel that having a lot of useless stuff that we never really needed in the first place is just wrong when we consider the number of people in the world who do not have the food they need on a daily basis.  And so, we downsize and give to a charitable organization to meet people’s immediate needs.

In this morning’s reading from Mark Jesus presents us with an even more challenging reason for downsizing.  Downsizing is the way of life for those who follow him.  Let me set the stage.

A young man came to Jesus and asked him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  But wait a minute.  Before going any further we must be clear about what this young man is asking.  He is not asking “What do I have to do get to Heaven when I die?”  Jesus did not walk all over Israel calling people to come and follow him so that the can go to heaven when they die.  The Gospel Jesus proclaimed was, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.  Turn away from what you’re doing and follow in faith.”  The Gospel Jesus proclaimed had to do with things here on earth.

The people of Israel in Jesus’ day anxiously expected the coming of the Messiah, God’s Holy Spirit anointed king, who would establish the Kingdom of God and put things to right.  Jesus came and announced the coming of the Kingdom of God and enacted it in everything he said and did.  The people of Israel just had to accept Jesus as their Messiah.  

Eternal life defined in that context is life as it would be in the Kingdom of God when the Messiah they were expecting had come and established it.  The eternal life the young man sought may be better understood as the life of the Age to Come when God will be present with his people and known by his people and righteousness and justice would rule the day rather than the corruption and oppression the people of God had been experiencing under the Romans, the Jewish monarchy, and the Jerusalem priesthood. 

The prophet Isaiah hits at the nature of the life of the coming Age when he said, “The Earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea” (Is. 11:9).  The “life” Isaiah describes concerns knowing God and it is an “on earth” not an “in heaven” matter.  Jesus himself in John’s Gospel defines eternal life as he prays for his followers at 17:3: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”  With what Jesus and Isaiah have said in mind, the eternal life this young man wanted a share in was the life of the promised coming age when knowing God will be unhindered.  He sincerely and simply wants to know his God and so he asks Jesus what he has to do for this to happen.

The short answer to that question is that the young man must fully associate himself with Jesus – fully associate himself – and thus commit to being part of the surrogate family that Jesus had built around himself of those who had left everything to follow him.  If he wants to have eternal life and know God, he must go all in with Jesus and his followers. 

To do that the young man is going to have to sort out who he believes Jesus is.  The man addressed Jesus as “Good Teacher.”  Jesus calls his hand on that asking “Why do you call me good?  Only God is good.”  Lingering behind what Jesus asks is the implied question of whether or not this young man believes that Jesus is God? 

This is question hits home with us is well.  We confess a belief that Jesus is God the Son become human.  Yet, do we truly live according to what we confess?  If we truly believe that Jesus is God, then why don’t we take him more seriously than we do?  You’ll notice a few verses down that the next time the man addressed Jesus he simply called him “Teacher”.  It is quite possible that for most of us, we in practice show that we simply regard Jesus as a great teacher of religion and morality rather than accept him as God.

The man does not answer Jesus and so Jesus begins to play the role of a teacher.  He starts listing the commandments.  Any faithful Israelite of that day would have believed God’s promise to those who kept the commandments to bless them in this life here on earth with peace, health, prosperity – the blessed life.  But, the young man seems to cut Jesus off saying, “Teacher (notice he doesn’t say ‘Good’), I’ve kept those since my youth.”  It’s at this point we’re supposed to hear the rock band U2 come on the radio and their lead singer Bono belting out, “But I still…haven’t found…what I’m looking for.”  Keeping the commandments might get him the inheritance of God’s promised blessing, but they couldn’t give him God.  This young man sincerely just wants to know God. 

So, Jesus did that thing that Jesus apparently did well.  He looked at the young man; looked intently at the man.   Then Mark says that Jesus loved him and said to him, “You lack one thing; go, and sell all that you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  Go, downsize, give it all to the poor, follow Jesus.  Jesus looked at the man through eyes of love – agape (uh-gah-pay) love; self-emptying, self-sacrificing, self-giving, wasteful, indiscriminate love – and told the man to divest himself of everything – wealth, status, family…everything – and he would come to know God, Jesus, as part of Jesus’ surrogate family. 

In essence Jesus told this sincere and faithful young man to give up the blessing of material comfort that he had received for keeping the commandments and exchange it for the blessing of knowing the nature of God as self-emptying love and add the bonus of getting to walk daily with Jesus who is God.  This is downsizing with an immeasurable gain.  This was shocking to the young man and made him very sad because he was quite wealthy…and he walked away.

Jesus confronts us with two kinds of downsizing that we must do if we want to know him, to know God, and have eternal life.  The first is that we must downsize our inflated sense of self and become as children.  We must let ourselves be filled with wonder, joy, vulnerability, and complete trust with respect to Jesus.  Just prior to this man coming to him, Jesus was blessing children but his disciples were keeping the children away so that Jesus became indignant with the Twelve and told them, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”  The only way to receive God’s Kingdom is to simply come to Jesus with the innocence of a child, with no strings attached, simply to be blessed.  This requires we downsize our inflated egos.

The second is a downsizing of life-style.  I brought up downsizing at the beginning of this sermon and don’t need to say much more other than Jesus calls us, his followers, to mirror him in the way we live our lives.  Thus, we should abstain from a way of life that encourages us to be upwardly mobile so that we accumulate wealth to ourselves.  In this day and age we, the followers of Jesus, are challenged to live according to different values such as “live simply that others may simply live” and “live to give”.  Certainly we are invited to remember that as followers of Jesus all that we have is not our own but it belongs to him as his resource for building his kingdom.  Everything we have is at his disposal.  We are only stewards of his wealth.  Ponder these things.  Amen.