Author: Kim Williams

I’m setting out to keep this morning’s message short and concise: I know we have plenty of other things on our minds today, so I’m going to try to honor that reality without preaching a 25 minute sermon.

            How have you been handling discord? I ask this assuming that you, like most Americans, have strong feelings about the political and social climate we’re living in at this moment in time. Strong feelings may not even begin to cover it, no matter which side of the political aisle you are coming from there is one thing that we all have noticed: things are very, very broken. So how are you handling those conflicts as they arise with your friends, family, acquaintances, facebook strangers in a comment thread…?

            I ask this because this morning’s readings deal with conflict, and give us some direction regarding how we should deal with conflict. While #cancelculture is big, there are a lot of temptations to simply shut out the voices we disagree with and cut off those who make us mad. And yes, there are sometimes good reason for creating those boundaries, especially when a person has become belligerent or abusive and one’s health and wellbeing are directly affected by their continued presence. However, the decision to #cancel someone or something should not be something that is taken lightly. But ugh, it’s SO MUCH EASIER just to mute the voices we don’t want to hear, right?

            We come to our Matthew reading this week needing to keep our minds open to the fact that this teaching likely did not come from Jesus’ ministry while he was alive, but it instead is Risen Christ wisdom that grew out of the community which this book of Matthew was written. Confusing? Maybe, but just imagine being in Jesus’ cohort where capital C Church was not yet a thing, and having these instructions given. Just a few chapter ago, Peter was called the Rock, the church had it’s foundation, so how within just a few short pages, is the foundation already cracking? Rather, knowing that the Gospels were written out of oral traditions by communities who were documenting the experience of both the historical Jesus and the resurrected Christ gives us an important reminder that Jesus was not a one-time thing, but is continually working in our lives and providing guidance and insight.

            There are a few approaches to this reading, one that reads it as the discipline section of an employee handbook and another that reads it as reconciliatory in nature. One reading can be hurtful and exclusionary, the other is filled with redemption, love, and inclusion. I think you can probably guess which direction we’re going to take.

            “If a member goes against you…” this is how it starts. Member is sometimes swapped with the word “brother” in other translations, both words are important considerations. Aside from being gender-neutral, member is open to any in a group, however, having the word brother, or “sibling” reminds us how connected we are to one another as children of God, and that connection isn’t just because we have matching bowling shirts or membership cards. The connection is deeper than sending in your annual pledge card or wearing name tags. I can throw my church name tag in the trash if I get mad enough, but I cannot escape the fact that in beloved community such as this you and I are linked together by the fact that our salvation is in Christ. This sets up the way we are to deal with one another when we disagree. It places emphasis on relationship.

            So in relationship, when another member goes against you, it is advised to handle the grievance when it is just the two of you. This is not an easy task. One on ones are notoriously avoided, it’s so much easier to submit anonymous feedback or to talk to everyone else about it, hoping that it’ll get back to the person eventually. We like to shield ourselves from the way the person will take the news, from potential backlash, from the embarrassment of realizing one’s missteps. We also aren’t always up for the discussion that is likely to follow, and the potential for being told how our own actions have been harmful. However, to maintain relationship, a one-on-one is best because it avoids gossip and give the other person an chance to clear up where there may have been a misunderstanding. As explained in the commentary on Saltproject.org, “This approach implicitly says: I respect you enough to give you space to rectify this, without embarrassing you in front of others; and I’m humble enough to realize I may have misunderstood something, or may have something to learn.” When we think about one-on-ones, sometimes I think we are worried we have to be confrontational about it, that there’s a certain “get in their face”-yness about it that we have to have. It is liberating to come at it from the angle of “I just want to understand more clearly” rather than “I’m mad and that’s it and you’re a bad person!” This approach distinctly avoids that kind of confrontation. No one wants to listen to a lecture about their moral failings. People are much more open to a heart-to-heart that listens as much as it explains. This is the first suggestion because, as we read in Matthew, “If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.” It’s the most direct approach to reconciliation.

But if they don’t listen, if the conversation doesn’t open the door to healing and reconciliation, there are other avenues. Remember, we can only control the way we respond, we have no control over how others react. There can be so many factors that lead to why reconciliation is not possible yet with just a one-on-one. There are layers of trauma or hurt to consider, there can be biases that they or we are clinging to that prevent moving forward, there are so many environmental and personal factors that could come into play that there may need to be other angles to approach the issue from. That’s where the next part of this advice comes in. Take a few members with you to act as witnesses. Not like, five people. Not a whole committee. Just one or two people who can either hear both sides without bias or who can act as mediator. A third-party can bring more insight and perspective and help to find common ground. Relationship is still priority.

            This next step is where I worry that a lot of churches can do a lot of damage. It screams public humiliation to then take a grievance to the whole church. I mean, I just picture the stocks and pillory out in the public square. Or every teen movie ever where one character prints a zillion flyers exposing another character and lines the school hallways with them. That’s not what is intended here. Exposing someone’s shortcomings so that everyone can be warned not to trust them or to embarrass them back into submission is not the point of this. Instead, it is to avoid airing grievances with just those who will agree with us. If I take my two BFFs and approach someone, there will still be some bias, it’ll be an echo chamber. However, once an issue is out there for everyone to weigh in on the likelihood of everyone siding only with me goes down, and the ability for someone else to connect with the other person goes up. This kind of conflict resolution has to be done with great care so that it doesn’t ostracize the other, but instead invites in accountability all around. This isn’t just blasting someone on social media. This is about coming together as a collective to find a way forward together.

            So we come to the most fascinating part of this pericope in my opinion, “and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” By tradition, Matthew was a tax collector. As we’ve noted over the last few weeks, Jesus’ ministry had made the dramatic shift from being directed towards Jewish people only to ministering to gentiles, as we saw in the story of the Canaanite women who challenged him to help her daughter. Jesus’ ministry has gentiles and tax collectors seated at the table with him. When we read this without considering that shift, it is easy to read some #cancelculture into it. Even if they don’t listen, there still has to be room for reconciliation. There can be boundaries made, especially if someone is relentlessly destructive, however there should always be a path back into the fold. The message should be to step away from this community until this destructive behavior has stopped. But we also know that forgiveness is an important part of what we are asked to do as a community of Christ followers. Spoiler alert: forgiveness will come up again in next week’s reading.

            When we come up against these times where someone’s behavior seems to grind against the Church, it is an important time to reflect on why exactly that behavior made us so gosh darned mad. This is an opportunity to examine whether we are living out God’s love to the fullest extent possible. This is an opportunity for the binding and loosing. God’s love is a living thing, the scriptures are not just dried ink on paper, but give us guidance to face complex issues that come up in our time, and the provision for binding and loosing allows us to continually keep love at the center of our ministry. It allows us to look at a modern problem though a modern lens instead of holding the Holy Spirit hostage in the first century. Binding and Loosing is what helps us to choose a path that is love-affirming even if we have scriptural backing to commit atrocities. Binding and loosing is what overcame the assertion that slaves should obey their masters in Ephesians, because you cannot love fully while holding that others have less humanity than you. It is what allows me, a woman, to stand at the pulpit. Binding and loosing doesn’t dilute the bible, it instead discerns the movement of the Spirit in each new age, abandoning the things that have become harmful and deadly as time marches on. Binding and loosing cannot be done by just one person alone, it must be done in community so as to not be arbitrary or more hurtful.

            In the UCC, we take covenant seriously, and part of covenantal living is honoring relationship, emphasis on reconciliation, and above all else leaving a door open rather than excommunicating or #cancelling. This work is done in community. And if, as a community, we ever wonder which direction to take, we can turn to today’s reading from Paul’s Letter to the Romans, which clearly spells out our most important consideration in handling conflict: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” So how do we deal with discord and conflict? Is it a loving approach? Does it leave room for reconciliation? Is it humble enough to know when it’s our problem? If so, then we’re the right path. May God bless our understanding of these sacred guidelines for maintaining relationships.

There’s something I’ve heard a lot of families really love to do. It’s something that brings them closer, that creates the cherished memories that they’ll carry with them throughout the years. It strengthens bonds, leads to howling laughter, and I’m sure it probably teaches a few lessons in cooperation, humility, and grace. Except it’s something I’m better off not doing, and I’m really bad at.

What is this wonderful activity? Family game nights.

They seem like a great idea, I’ll pull the scrabble board out with the best of intentions. And then someone else manages to get a triple word score using the letter Q somehow, and I become enraged, a creature from my own worst nightmares: I become a very, very sore loser. I love to win. I even struggle with tic-tac-toe as I’m playing with my first grader, and I have to remind myself that there is no trophy for moms who mercilessly win every round against their small child.

I’d love to think that this is just my own personal issue, however, as I look around it becomes pretty clear that this desire to win is a product of the culture I come from. As Americans, victory and dominance are deeply embedded into our value system. Don’t believe me? Think about whichever presidential candidate you’re planning on voting for. Now, imagine that the candidate you do not want wins by a landslide. How are you feeling? If you’re like many of the folks I’ve been talking to representing both of the major political parties, you’re probably feeling sick and a little ragey. We don’t like defeat. Our sports teams can even give us similar responses. When I found out that my husband liked…I can’t even say it out loud, well, I’m a Giants fan, so…, anyway, I was shocked, befuddled, and immediately forbade any talk of *that* team winning if it also meant that my team is losing. We hear of fights breaking out, violence happening at events when the fans of rival teams get a little too wrapped up in this cultural value of victory. Even those of us who don’t get disproportionately attached to board game wins can fall into the trap of pursuing success above all else.

Peter, who we remember in last week’s text was given kudos for his faithful confession that Jesus is the messiah, has just had his humility checked in this week’s reading. I feel like I could have made a series of the last few weeks of sermons entitled, “Oh, Peter.” We are given another fascinating look into the complex person Simon called Peter was as we read that just as quickly as Peter had declared Jesus is the Messiah, he has also blurted out that Jesus should probably avoid that whole suffering and death piece. Peter, who was juuuuust the star student, is now responded to with “get behind me, Satan!”

See, Peter, even though he knows Jesus is the Messiah, he’s also a product of his culture. He was ready for some sort of great victory, a triumph over the oppressors. He was ready for Jesus to take down Rome, and anything counter to that imagery was unfathomable to him. For Jesus to begin to reveal to the disciples that there would be great suffering, and then death, this was completely against what had been formed in Peter’s mind by the cultural expectation that the messiah would be a victorious king. Hearing suffering and death, it’s easy to understand how the next part, “and on the third day be raised,” maybe wasn’t the most shocking part of Jesus’ revelation about the times to come. Peter was so focused on what he thought a win would look like, that he couldn’t comprehend beyond death to the different kind of triumph that was to come with the resurrection.

So he pulled Jesus aside and tried to reason with him. Jesus, you can’t. How about you don’t just give up, don’t admit defeat, and don’t let the Romans kill you? Instead, let’s, you know, win. This can’t happen.

The way Jesus responds to this is with a swift reminder that Peter’s idea of success is pretty darned…human. Jesus is human, too, so it comes with a warning—do not tempt him to take the easy, worldly-stuff focused way out.

The words “Get behind me, Satan!” cause us to bristle as we encounter them, it seems like an extra harsh response to the person who just a few verses ago was called the foundation of the church. However, remembering that Jesus is human and divine, we can understand the urgency of Jesus’ response, the need to keep all temptation away. Get behind me is a way of asserting that Peter needs to remember that he is following Jesus’ lead, and it is essential for him to follow lest he become a stumbling block. Focusing too much on this human view of victory, the standard for success set by the dominant culture, could complicate and mess up the whole thing.

The values set by the dominant culture can be dangerous if we allow ourselves to elevate them higher than God. Winning at scrabble at any cost is just a symptom of a larger cultural value that is placed on dominance, however, we her over and over again from jesus that the last will be first. That power as defined by people has no bearing on how God defines power and success. Rather, we know that practicing some of the harder forms of love are what it takes to truly follow Christ. In Matthew, we hear “if they want to become my followers, let them deny themselves ad take up their cross and follow me.” This is a martyr-complex-inducing piece of scripture, however, what is being asked of us is to drop the idea that victory can be won by domination. What good is it to be the most highly decorated scrabbler ever to place a wooden tile on a board game if one did not show love, but instead became overcome with evil in order to achieve that title? I’m sure you can take the metaphor further while thinking of corporate greed, political power-grabs, and literally any other way that we put victory before God.

Our text from Romans, luckily, outlines many ways to flip the script on winning from our cultural compulsion to personally get ahead, and instead we are able to see how we are to move humanity along by looking out for the best interests of our neighbor as well. Success looks different when we realize we should all succeed. This list of ways to love is as counter-cultural today as it was when Paul wrote it. We can keep God as our focus when we follow this love list, and we help move others closer to God as we show them love, even and especially the harder ways of loving other. You know what I mean. There are the easy kinds of love. I can shower my kids with hugs and kisses and “well, alright, another 20 minutes of YouTube” love all day long, that’s easy. They’re cute. Outdoing one another in showing honor is not as easy, especially when I don’t necessarily like the other person. Like, at all. Blessing and not cursing those who persecute me, yeah, not so easy. Especially on game night.

Right now, this message of not worshiping at the altar of the victory cup is an important one for us, as we risk not extending the kind of love that brings others closer to God by clinging to the ways we personally want to win, whether it’s in an online argument that we’re too proud to back down from or an affinity toward the people we like, who think like us, and cursing at those who don’t. We can practice shedding our culturally-prescribed love of victory by asking ourselves if this thing we’re really fired up about fits the description of love offered in Romans 12. If it doesn’t, it might mean that we are placing too much value on something that can act as a stumbling block for our own spiritual progress and for the spiritual progress of those around us. Let’s not be taken in by he allure of a human standard for success, but instead be open to the way of the cross, a way that, even though challenges and trial opens up new ways of learning, living, and yes, loving together. May our understanding of these sacred texts be blessed, and may our actions follow—get behind—Jesus, trusting his divine lead. Amen.

            What do you know about rocks? Without being a geologist, or having ever gotten higher than a C grade in any sort of natural sciences class, I can offer a few of my observations on rocks. Rocks are hard, even though some are softer than others—there is quite a difference between soapstone and a diamond. The differences in shape and smoothness, the color variations, the ways the rocks were formed in the beginning and the ways the elements they were exposed to shaped them, mean that rocks can be quirky as people are. Some have impossible angles, others shimmer like there’s a light from within them. Some end up in Charlie Brown’s trick-or-treat bag, others wind up skipped across the glassy surface of water. They’re pretty sturdy, until they aren’t. Sometimes you’ll find a gigantic boulder split in half, a tree growing in the middle of it. Sometimes you’ll be hopping across a creek from rock to rock, thinking they all look pretty solid, only to find the base of the rock was not well-gummed into the mud and you’ll end up with soaked hiking shoes.

Our reading from Isaiah says, “Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.” Rocks, like people, have places they came from. Archaeologists can trace ancient travel routes based on finding a rock in an archaeological site hundreds and hundreds of miles away from where it should be. Rocks can be neatly arranged in a geometric grid to help assist in cultivating and maintaining certain types of energy, they can be laid in slabs across kitchen countertops, and worn on necklace chains. They find your big toe when you walk around outside barefoot, they provide a place to sit when you’re weary on a hiking trail, they are tiny pebbles and they are mountains.

            So when we hear that Jesus has called Peter the Rock, which is gonna be the foundation for the church going forward, with all of these thoughts about rocks, how does that all work out? What kind of rock, anyway?

            We remember Peter is a nickname given to Simon by Jesus. The name “Peter” means stone. Nicknames are a funny thing, they can convey affection and irony all at once. I have a super laid back uncle who moves…at his own pace, and his nickname from my dad since they were young men has been “streak,” no, not because it was the 70s and steaking was en vogue, but instead as an ironic ode to the relaxed pace at which he moves through the world. So when I think about Jesus latching onto calling Simon Peter, I have a lot of fun working through the possible scenarios leading to that nickname. Simon called Peter was Jesus’s first disciple. He has followed Jesus through every single moment in his ministry, has been a witness to incredible miracles, has watched Jesus’s own arc of personal growth in his ministry. Simon called Peter was also the disciple to step out of the boat and take a few steps toward Jesus on the water before he panicked and sank…like a rock. Did Jesus know this would happen? Was Peter a pre-emptive nickname knowing this would happen?

Peter will also famously deny knowing Jesus three times. Rocks are considered to be steady, unflinching, and solid in their place. A guy who follows Jesus from day one, knows his ministry and teachings better than anyone, giving into fear, collapsing into grief, and denying any association with Jesus doesn’t seem super rock-like.

And yet, it is in this story that we hear Jesus ask “What are people saying about me?” and then pressing further, “Okay, but, who do you say that I am?” Peter is the first to blurt out “YOU’RE THE MESSIAH!” because how could he not, after all he’s experienced? After spending so much time in the transformative presence of Jesus. Even though Jesus wasn’t quite the messiah that had been expected based on the piled up hopes of a people wanting a strong warrior to deliver them from evil. Jesus was not a grand king, instead he lived in near-poverty, constantly moving from place to place without putting down roots. This confession that escaped Simon Peter’s lips must have been dancing through his mind, constantly flashing “messiah! Messiah! Messiah!” but he hadn’t had a chance to confirm what he believed, until now, suddenly, when Jesus decides to do some market research about what his target audiences think of him.

And so Simon Peter, “The Rock,” is met with approval by Jesus. Furthermore, Jesus puns on his name, saying “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church…” and we hear Jesus talk about the Church, Ecclesia, for the first and only time, indicating that a distinct community of believers was to come together.

But it still doesn’t breed much confidence that the rock on which the church would be built was the same guy whose bravado pulled him out of a boat, nearly drowning him when doubt crept in, or who would deny every knowing the man he just proclaimed to be the messiah. It seems like a, well, rocky start.

The beauty of the Gospels is that we don’t get one dimensional characters and tropes whose actions we’ve already got figured out, and whose fates are neatly and predictably wrapped up by the end of the play. We experience these precious and brief years of Jesus’s ministry and life through the lens of real people, flawed people. Simon called Peter was not the bravest, he had real-life fears and quirks, his faith was great, and yet he also recoiled and avoided painful or dangerous situations. What does it mean that the Church—capital C—is built with a foundation like Peter, flawed but always learning?

When we go back to my earlier listing of the entirely unscientific qualities of rocks, we see a few things. One, that rocks are so unique, they have their individual qualities and quirks, flaws and all. Another thing to consider is that rocks are not nearly as solid or as unchanging as they appear if we stare at one for a few minutes. Years of water passing through a rocky area change the shape of the rocks, elemental changes, earthquakes, and little saplings becoming mighty trees in a small fissure can also change a rock from it’s initial forming. The church’s foundation is not rickety because it is built on an unlikely hero like Simon called Peter, whose legacy was written faults and all—because let’s face it, if it was important that all the apostles looked like they were the smartest, bravest, most confident people ever then it would have been written that way—it is a strong foundation because it is built on the assumption that change is part of life, that the church, and we the faithful, as we weather storms and are changed by our environment, that the church will also continue to be formed and shaped over time, ever true and ever relevant in each new age.

God, as we your faithful, quirky, sometimes craggy people ponder the scriptures, we appreciate the stories where we can see the great love and trust you have for faithful, quirky, sometimes craggy people, and we pray that we never question our ability to be the Church just because we don’t fit the mold of what we think we need to be in order to be followers of Christ. We are your Church, quirks, flaws, learning curves, and all, and that is a powerfully redemptive understanding for us to have. We thank you for your grace. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

How did the Word sit with you on this already hot morning?  If you’re feeling perturbed a bit by this morning’s Gospel reading, it’s okay. I found myself trying to gauge whether it was the extra hot weather all week that had me so fussy about the text for this week, or if it’s just the text itself that doesn’t seem to sit well. Unlike other stories of Jesus explaining a parable and then performing a miracle, this one feels off. Did you feel that way, too?

            First, Jesus starts by saying “Look, it’s not what you put in your mouth that defiles, it’s what comes out of your mouth.” I like this, as a former crash dieter who has always had food hang-ups. This first bit is okay. I can use this. It’s also a snappy comeback to pick out and use whenever I want. Unfortunately, we know that scripture can’t just be the good little bumper-sticker slogans, but has to be taken as a whole to be fully understood. So on we go, let’s get uncomfortable.

After Jesus says this, the Pharisees are up in arms about it. If there was Twitter in the first century, I can imagine all the Pharisees tweeting about how what Jesus has said is an attack on their religion (because, well, it kinda was a low blow, aimed at the Jewish purity laws) and how very mad they were about it, ignoring that if only good, helpful, loving things came out of their mouths then whatever went in wouldn’t be up for discussion. Jesus was Jewish himself, he followed many of the same rules when it came to what to eat, he was saying, “Just pay attention to what comes out of your mouth,” but instead, the pharisees were upset with the way he worded it. Jesus wasn’t on Twitter, he was probably an Instagram guy. Or maybe LinkedIn—All the connections in the world, and not owned by Facebook. Either way, the disciples, who had multiple Social Media accounts, let Jesus know that the pharisees were tweeting about him.

So Jesus says the first thing that makes me incredibly uncomfortable in this morning’s reading: “Let them alone, they are blind guides of the blind.” Oof. We’ll come back to why this makes me uncomfortable in a minute, but for now we’ll finish walking through this story.

Peter wants the parable explained. Maybe it’s for the benefit of the pharisees who are still probably in a heightened state, waiting for more ammunition so they can get upset at Jesus again, or maybe Peter truly didn’t get “Don’t be a holy jerk.” when he first heard the parable. Jesus questions this,  “Really, Pete? You still don’t get it?” And he responds with potty humor. He talks about the digestive process, everything ending up in the sewer, which, as the mom of kids in the tween-teen ages, I appreciate, and then he says that it’s when evil intentions come from the heart that we can really truly become worse than an unserviced port-a-potty in 111 degree heat. Defiled.

Jesus also says that unwashed hands do not defile. That’s what this whole thing was about, just before our reading started, the Pharisees had asked Jesus why they start eating without washing their hands, thus starting this whole teachable moment. However, please, if you pluck one bit of wisdom from today’s Gospel, do not hold too tightly to this bit about unwashed hands. Jesus wasn’t giving this chat during a pandemic. Wash your hands, please. What he is saying is that all the clean-eating, raw, keto, vegan diets in the world won’t matter if you’ve got garbage in your heart. Being open to God’s love, sharing this love with others, is above all other rules. Even if it means eating a gmo carb. Following the law is important (Remember,Jesus says he isn’t here to take down the Law, but to uphold it) but if you can’t multitask and follow the law while being a good human at the same time, then being a good human takes priority.

So then, we start the second half of this morning’s story. The part where things get really uncomfortable.

Jesus and company come to the district of Tyre and Sidon, and as they’re approaching a woman comes to him. In Mark 7, where we find the writer of Mark’s version of this event, Jesus is in someone’s private residence, hoping to go unnoticed. That detail didn’t make it into Matthew’s story, but to my mind, it sounds like Jesus is, once again, tired. Maybe irritable. He was hoping no one would find him. In Matthew, we don’t get this backstory for the events that unfold. We are simply told that on the way there, a Canaanite woman approaches him, shouting.

Quick refresher on the Canaanites before this interaction takes place: they were the indigenous peoples of what became Israel, and were at this point in history a displaced people. Hold that in your mind as we get to these next parts.

The Canaanite woman is yelling and shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon!” As a Canaanite, she is a Gentile. She is an outsider to him. Her ancestors have been displaced from their land by his, yet she comes to him, recognizing him as not only Lord, but also as someone from royal Jewish lineage. Keeping track of where the power lies in any given situation is important, because it gives more insight to the interaction.

Her daughter is possessed by demons. We can often read into what it meant to be possessed by demons at this time. We can infer mental or physical illness into many of these situations, though we need to be careful when we do so to make sure that it isn’t just being done to fit our own narrative. What we do know for sure is that someone with a child who is possessed is a) used to advocating on her child’s behalf, b) most certainly an outcast, which means that as a gentile in a jewish area, this woman is pushed even farther to the margins, and c) she’s probably exhausted and looking for help from the most unlikely places. So she makes the desperate decision to plead to Jesus for assistance.

And Jesus straight up ignores her. Just keeps walking. Where is the bereft, but not too grief stricken to heal and feed the masses Jesus from just a chapter ago? She’s at his feet and he keeps walking. His disciples ask that Jesus do something about it, she’s just so persistently yelling at us, and can’t we just get there in peace? It’s unclear whether by “send her away” they mean he should dismiss her, or if they mean “send the demons away”, which is a gentler way of reading it, but by Jesus’ responds, I think we can guess they’re wanting to be rid of the woman and her possessed daughter.

Here’s where it gets super cringey. Jesus resonds with “Not in my job description, lady. I’m here for the lost sheep of Israel.”

Yikes.

As we used to say in high school, Dissed and Dismissed. I don’t know if they still say this, but it fits here. Jesus was not being nice.

And that’s hard to hear. We tend to think of Jesus as the nice guy who is ever merciful and here we see him on an off day.

Nevertheless, she persisted.

She blocked his path, kneeling, saying “Lord, help me.”

Jesus, again, fires one back at her. “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” This is the burn of the century. No matter how you translate it, re-read it, or do mental gymnastics to soften it, jesus calls her a dog. Dogs, in the first century, were not like my spoiled little corgi who is, as I speak, laying on his back, konked out and dreaming of the delicious wet food topper I’ll put in his bowl of kibble later, before he climbs the doggy stairs we have so he can get up to the bed with us. Dogs were persistent scavengers. They were pests. He has called her a scavenging pest, he has reduced her to less than human. He has essentially called her the “B-Word.”

Our Jesus! The Prince of Peace! The “That they may all be one” guy! Except, here, he is only worried about other Jewish people. This Canaanite woman, this displaced granddaughter of indigenous peoples, is nothing but a howling animal.

But then, and here is the truly beautiful moment of this whole reading, she turns the tables on him. “Yes, Lord, yet even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

In that, she challenges what he has said. She challenges him to reconsider how he sees her, because how, in all of his anti-imperial speeches against the colonization of Rome, how can he ignore that she has just shown him to be as much the colonizer of her people as she says “Master’s Table.”? How can he ignore what he had JUST PREACHED at the beginning of this pericope, about it not mattering what goes in one’s mouth, but what comes out of it. He has been challenged to uphold his own teaching.

This is a profound learning moment.

So Jesus responds with, “Great is your faith!” and her daughter is healed on the spot.

This is a hard interaction to read because it is so uncharacteristic of the “Jesus, without sin” image we carry, but what we learn here is that it is not a sin to learn better and then do better. We witness growth, personal growth, within this short story. We see that Jesus is caught not fully practicing what he preaches, and instead of throwing a tantrum or shutting her out even further, Jesus heals the girl, and after all of the times he’s been the teacher, today he has been taught.

We can take a lot from this “Know better, do better” story. My first suggestion for us comes from the text itself. Remember how I said the blind leading the blind thing bothered me? This is one “know better, do better” that we can do immediately. Just as Jesus learned that he could go off-job description to help this woman, we can also learn to use better words when we encounter texts like this. Blind guides of the blind is ableist language that we rarely question when we encounter it, especially since it has Biblical roots. We’ve come a long way from the first century, however. We know better, we fully embrace the god-created wonder of every person, and we must do better by not using examples like blindness to illustrate our points, especially if we’re using it in a negative sense. Same thing with using the term “Blind Spot” when we really mean our growing edges.

My second suggestion is that we look back at our own stories for areas of growth, or growth potential. There’s a criteria in biblical scholarship for determining the historical accuracy of a story, and it is, would this story be an embarrassment to Jesus if he knew it was published widely? If so, then it can be assumed to have really happened. This story is a calling out in the biggest way, it pairs his teaching with him not behaving the way he just told other people to behave. It reminds me of every time I’ve been called out for my words and actions not syncing up, I wouldn’t want that published and distributed. We can assume this story is doubly accurate because it shows up two times in all it’s cringe-worthy glory. And yet, it was important enough to the writers of the Gospels Matthew and Mark that they kept it. Growth is a powerful thing, even when it’s uncomfortable and embarrassing. Even when it challenges us in the middle of the road, pointing out all of our flaws. Jesus took the challenge, he grew. He didn’t force his apostles to never mention the miracle of being called out and learning from his misstep. We can do the same. It is a Christian, biblically-supported action to examine when we behaved very poorly indeed, and do better next time. We should always be learning and doing better. I hope that if I revisit this sermon in the future I cringe at it because I’ve learned better and can deliver a better one.

As we go into this blisteringly hot week that will undoubtedly irk us and make us irritable, if we find ourselves doing something or speaking in a way that is gross, defiling, and ignoring that God’s salvation and love is for all, I pray that we learn from it, know better, and do better. In the name of Jesus Christ, who taught us all that growth is holy work, Amen.

:::Announcer’s voice:::: Last week on “The Gospel According to Matthew” Jesus had received the news of John the Baptist’s death, tried to get some me-time, but then there were crowds! His celebrity status followed him to the remote location he had gone to for solitude. Then, miracles! Bread! Fish! Abundance!

This week, we are given another familiar Gospel story, but just because we know it well doesn’t mean we know it completely. The beauty of these ancient sacred texts is that they have so much packed into short snippets that we could rediscover them our entire lives and still find new meaning and wisdom nestled within. So that’s what we’re doing today, it’s our voyage to use sea-faring language.

Jesus sent everyone away. He had given the crowds the spiritual and physical nourishment they needed, and it was time for him to get his much needed alone time. Something that never ceases to strike me as important is how human Jesus was, how we can relate to the way he experienced the same emotions we experience. What a gift, a blessing, that God sent us someone who got worn down, who felt overwhelmed, who recognized a need for quietude in an unrelenting world of busyness that could be all consuming. What a gift that we have precedence for asking for a break because the Son of God was unafraid of disrupting his productivity or delaying meeting his healing and saving quotas because he was worn down and ragged. And in the case of this morning’s reading, he was certainly that. We can read the exhaustion in this passage by the way that it says “Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.” He risked being stranded in a remote place by sending his disciples off ahead of him, but he risked being interrupted again in prayer if he kept them all hanging out, waiting for him. He risked feeling obligated to wrap it up quickly so not to inconvenience them while they sat idly, the night growing deeper and darker.

While this isn’t the only point that bears importance for us in our ever-busy world, I want to make sure we take notice of it. Jesus, who in just a few moments will walk on water, needs a break sometimes. And if the Son of God, the one who is both fully human and fully divine, can’t just recharge and resume a hectic, packed schedule, how on earth can we expect it from ourselves? How can we expect it from others? Hold onto this. We’re moving on from the Self Care speech in a moment, but it is important, especially as we are pushed harder than ever while we adapt to new technologies and are emotionally and mentally drained from merely being aware of what is taking place in the world around us. Jesus, who had enough work piled up to be able to work nonstop for centuries without it ever being done recognized the need for prayer, reflection, and time away from “work.”

And so, with Jesus’ dismissal, the disciples are off on a boat, leaving him alone. The seas had turned rough by the end of the night. The winds picked up, and their boat was being battered by waves. We’ve experienced this kind of choppy sea before, in Matthew 8:23-27. In that pericope, Jesus is in the boat with them, and he is asleep. The apostles wake him, afraid for their lives, and he gives the familiar “You of little faith” speech as he calms the seas. I like to picture that he snuggled back up and went to sleep again, but I think that’s the cranky parent in me that has shone too many lights under the bed looking for monsters in the middle of a REM cycle. This story is slightly different from the other calming the storm story in that the disciples are alone in the boat. If we pay attention to the story, we see that the apostles are not afraid of the waves, or of the deep waters below them. Instead, it’s Jesus that scares them.

Jesus, the guy they’re following and devoting their lives to. The man who does amazing things on the regular, but this, this is something new. This is far from shore. This is in the middle of the Sea of Galilee. Fun fact, these winds that kick up in the story are something you can actually experience today. The geographic location of the sea makes for sudden and violent storms as the wind whips in over the eastern mountains. The cool air rushes in over the warm air that was previously hanging above the sea, and as the warm air rises the sudden change can create some dramatic winds. So this is what Jesus is quite literally walking into, and it scares the men in the boat, who assume they are alone in the middle of this tumult. And they think he’s a ghost. And they don’t trust that it’s really him. Peter, who we give a lot of credit to for stepping out of the boat, is stepping out as a challenge to the Maybe-Jesus, Maybe-Ghost figure on the water. “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He steps out and takes a few steps before faltering, realizing that the winds are whipping at the hems of his clothes, and that he is standing in the middle of the deep, mysterious, tumultuous sea. And he cries out for Jesus’ help, which Jesus gives. “You of little faith…” Jesus says again, just as he did before, but this time, for Peter’s benefit only. Jesus calms the seas, stops the infamous winds of the Sea of Galilee, and everyone in the boat worships Jesus, awed by what he has just done.

There are so many jumping off places for theological reflection within this short miracle story that one hardly knows where to begin. We’ll start with the story itself. As we know, the Gospels are made up from four different accounts of the life, death, and in some, the resurrection of Jesus. The Gospels each have their own flavor and style. The stories don’t always link up, there are differences between them. This is why, at Christmas, sometimes we feel like we haven’t heard the whole story—in our brains we have collectively smushed the separate birth accounts together, but in reality, there are very different ways that the birth of Jesus was recorded. Forgive me if I’m over-explaining this, but a refresher is always good. We have the synoptic Gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke, and then we have John. Mark, Matthew and Luke are lumped together because they are considered to have common source material they drew from. These three were composed at different times, in different places, with Mark being the oldest of the documents. John is a more recent book, composed in the later part of the first century. The synoptic Gospels have a lot more overlapping material, John has some similarities, but often it has it’s own storytelling tradition that is divergent from the other three. I give this bit of backstory because I think this next tidbit is fascinating. The story of Jesus walking on water appears in three of the four gospels, however, it’s not the three we expect. It is in Matthew, Mark, and John, however it is omitted in Luke. This is significant. Rather than being a tradition handed down from the same source material and reworked by the authors of the synoptic volumes, it is a story that appears in John as well. This was an important event to be shared and carried on through multiple traditions and retellings.

So what was so important about it that it made it through oral tradition in these different strains? One could argue that it’s the whole Walking on Water thing, that is so well known and pervasive in our lexicon that folks who have never even cracked open a bible would get the reference. Or, as we talked about last week, it could be the subtle miracles nestled within the big flashy one.

Theologically, water has deep meaning for us. The sea is deep, mysterious, scary. It is filled with unknown peril. It’s kind of like the world we live in. It’s filled with unknowns, especially right now. Jesus calms stormy seas twice, and this isn’t just a magician’s trick. Theologically and metaphorically, Jesus is offering assurance in a world that is unpredictable. For the early church, the folks who circulated the traditions that eventually were put to paper and made into these Gospels, it was a scary time. Jesus was gone, so how could their belief in him sustain them. Christ followers in that first century were not popular folks, and lived in danger of persecution and death. Jesus was in the boat with the apostles the first time he calmed the storm, but they were alone the second time. Even so, Jesus appeared, calmed the storm again. This is strong comfort for a church that is weathering the storm of establishing itself without its leader. Even without Jesus in the boat, he will come to their aid, will give them a hand up from the choppy waves when they fall in.

And that brings us to Peter. Peter questions Jesus, challenges him. He too tries to walk on water, but has a moment of doubt and falls in. This snippet about Peter only shows up in the Matthew account. Why? What in the tradition in which Matthew was formed caused this part of the story to be retained and passed down when the others omitted it? Peter fails when he tries to walk on water, fails when his faith in Jesus is overshadowed by his very real, very human emotions of fear kicking in, but Jesus helps him up. Jesus chastises him, “you of little faith…” but perhaps it’s done with a good natured chuckle, as he helps his friend, who will later deny him, and gives him unconditional love. This is important for us to hear, because Jesus witnessed one of his own apostles directly challenging him, and then once Jesus has helped this headstrong dude who has just STEPPED OUT OF HIS BOAT to be able to stand on the water as well, Peter loses faith. It would be easy to be mad at this, to say, “forget it, you’re not disciple material.” And let him sink. Or at the very least kick him out of the club once they were back on solid ground. Instead, Jesus loves him, and loves him again.

Our waves are choppy, folks. Our seas have been stormy. Sometimes it’s hard not to let doubt seep in, to question things. This story, this miracle, is that even when we cannot have full faith, when we are shaken, when we have that moment when we’ve stepped out of the boat and realize we are no longer safe or comfortable, Jesus is still reaching out a hand, catching us. His love is inescapable. We need only to cry out to him when we realize we are sinking if we find we are unable to keep up with the stormy demands of stepping out of the boat. May your seas be calm, but when they are rough, may you know that Jesus is always within your reach. Amen.

“We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” Did you pick up on that line from this morning’s Gospel reading? I know you heard it, but did you really pick up on it? I know I’ve read it before. I know I’ve listened to it and gone down some weird mental rabbit trails wondering who had the fish, were they freshly caught since this pericope started near water or were they like, someone’s pocket fish they had on hand for snacking on the road while on tour with Jesus? The mind reels. Sometimes when we know something as well as the loaves and fishes story, it’s easy to skim over it, to miss the nuance because we’ve heard this story enough times that we feel justified in taking it easy during the reading, it’s like putting on a favorite movie while cleaning. I can run the vacuum and still follow along with the plot of Clueless, so it’s the same for the loaves and fishes story, right? 

Except, that’s not the way to approach scripture. When we let our brains go into “Ah, that old story? I got this!” mode, we miss the opportunity for the words to have new meaning for us, for the old words to strike a new chord with what we’re experiencing right now. Today, in the midst of “What’s Next?” 2020 unrest and weirdness and grief. For me, reading that line this time, it caught me. It grabbed me. It convicted me. I’m curious if it did the same for you, or how you were stirred by these old words we know. “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” 

Let’s back up a bit. 

Our scene is set by Jesus hopping on a boat to get some alone time. All we’re given in the opening of this morning’s lectionary reading is “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.” What Jesus had heard was devastating news. His cousin and mentor, John the Baptist, was dead. The disciples had collected the body and buried it, and immediately after they informed Jesus. John’s death had been gruesome, his head had been delivered on a platter to Herod’s niece and her mother, a gift he wasn’t thrilled about, but was obligated to give, as he had promised her anything she wanted. Things were complicated then, too. Herod was king, but Rome was bigger, and the constant pressure of keeping peace while occupied by an empire required delicate footing. John, with his prophetic reputation, was a dangerous person to have alive, but because so many regarded him as a prophet, he was also a dangerous person to kill. But, it had been done. And Jesus needed a moment. 

Grief is an unwieldy, wild thing. Even after years, it still can find ways of taking one’s breath away. In those first moments of hearing the news , Jesus recognized the need to be alone, to sit with the emotions away from people. To quit for the day, and retreat to a deserted place where he could pray, recuperate just enough from the devastating blow to continue his work. We cannot be at our best when we are depleted, even Jesus recognized this.

Anyone who has ever been interrupted in the middle of taking time out can empathize with this on a basic level. Jesus took a moment for self care, but word got out where his secluded spot was, and people flocked to that place, on foot, from great distances. An opportunity to see Jesus! We know, we know, he’s trying to take some time off, but we are sick! We have problems! Please, just help us! And so he did. He healed and cared for them all afternoon and into the evening. 

If you’re anything like me, you may have been filled with cringey indignation at this. The disciples certainly were! He just needed like, ONE afternoon, people, can’t your problems wait a few hours?! In a moment of trying to protect their teacher, they tried to pull Jesus away from the crowd, which he had been surrounded by, immersed in all day. The disciples wanted him to take care of himself first, they wanted to send people back to the villages to buy food, and squeeze in an exit for Jesus. But compassion for the sick and afflicted again overrode grief, and Jesus told his disciples, “No, they don’t need to go, YOU give them something to eat.”

Wait. 

What?

It’s no wonder they responded the way they did. “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” None of them had anticipated a crowd, let alone imagining THEY would be on the hook for catering the whole affair. Can you picture the scene, the huddle of apostles, just barely able to pull Jesus from doing the work he was moved by compassion to do, all circled up thinking, “Okay, so we give up everything to travel with him, we are essentially just as destitute as everyone else here, but he wants US to feed them? What do you have, Bart? Bread? Saaaaaaame. You Andrew? Fish. Of course, it’s alllways fish with you. Sooooo, I’m guessing I know what’s in your satchel too, Pete. Alright. 5 loaves, two fishes. Fish? No, one perch, the other’s trout, fishes. Look, we don’t have time for the language police, there’s a huge crowd out there. Who got the head count? “5,000, plus women and children.” You only counted men? That’s not very accurate, not that we’ll get very far as it is. Well, I guess we better tell Jesus the bad news, “Rabbi, uh…We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”

We know the rest of the story. The crowds sat, and using words we will hear again when we celebrate the eucharist, the food was blessed, the bread broken, the pieces of loaves were distributed, a basket for each apostle was passed, person by person through the entire crowd, until all were fed. When the disciples, undoubtedly in the first ever recorded act of church ushers skillfully navigating the baskets through the assembled congregation, finally met with their baskets at the back of the crowd, the baskets were still filled, teeming with bread, filled to the brim. Leftovers, even! Out of Andrew’s musty pocket tilapia and my day-old baguette!

That a miracle occurred, there is no question. Whether you’re of the “defies logic, physics, and breadcrumbs” camp or the “everyone banded together and filled the baskets with what they found in their own satchels to share” group, there is a miracle to behold here. Something my dad taught me is that, when reading the miracle stories, to look for the side-miracles as well, to get a fuller grasp of exactly what had been accomplished here. You know, the less flashy ones without the fantastic biblical pyrotechnics and tons of fan art made about them through the ages. When I look for the other miracles at work in this pericope, I see two. First, the miracle of Jesus’ attention during a time when he had fully intended for mourning and prayer. His compassion runs so deeply that turning away the immediate and pressing need of a crowd, hurting, scared, afflicted, and living under the thumb of empire looking for hope was not an option for him. He gave of himself, even when it hurt and he needed to be cared for just as all those in the crowd. But also, he didn’t give alone.

The other fireworks-free miracle was that he managed to flip the scarcity mindset of “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” within his own inner circle, to remind them that ours is a God of great abundance. I think this hidden and kind of, well, beige miracle might have the most wisdom for us, a people who are hurting, scared, afflicted and *ahem* living under the threat of empire, looking for hope in this Covid-coated, what-on-earth-did-I-just-hear-the-newscaster-say, is this even real life or did we slip into a bizarre parallel universe 2020 world. 

As we are experiencing all of these things, and sighing deep, communal sighs of grief, feeling tension well up as we witness atrocities, and swimming in the mixed feelings of never being able to do quite enough to fix everything, we might find ourselves fighting against a “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”mindset. How can we replicate church when we aren’t allowed into church? How do we shape a future that we never asked for using only the things we’ve known from the way we’ve done them in the past? How can we grow our membership, our ministries, our evangelism-yes, I know I chafe against that word too, but we need to say it, our evangelism to do God’s work here on earth, if we haven’t had to do it this way before? 

We aren’t alone in doing this. Just as Jesus didn’t do his work alone, remember the “No, YOU feed them” piece?- and we aren’t alone in the work we are called to do either. For the disciples, it took moving past the scarcity mindset and trusting that the five loaves and two fish would be enough. How is the scarcity mindset keeping us from trusting the miraculous abundance of a compassionate God and bringing that abundance to the world? In what ways are we as a church, or as a community, as a country, finding we are being caught up in looking at what we don’t have instead of being open to what we do have, already here with us, and how can we turn these things that don’t look like much or feel sufficient in the face of huge change and newness, how will we turn them into more than enough to not only carry us through this pandemic but to come out of it with even more than we had imagined? None of us knows how our world will be changed when we come through the other end of this, or what profound impact this will have on the way we live, relate to one another, or worship. We might be meeting this way for a long time, and not to be a downer, but we may have to sit with unresolved grief and climb many more hurdles before we find ourselves together again physically. So what do we have? The hidden miracle for us is that one of creative abundance using what is right in front of us. So often, we assume that the best solution to a big conundrum is going to be expensive and will be impossible to pull off with the limited resources at our disposal. In order for Jesus to do his work, he needs us to trust in what we already have with us, trust that what we bring to the huddle as we figure out how best to be the church now, at this moment, is not only adequate, but will be enough to sustain us well beyond distance-churching and into whatever our post-COVID world will ask of us. 

And finally, where the lectionary leaves off, the folks were full of good food and their spiritual and physical needs had been tended, but it leaves us wondering what happened to Jesus? Did he ever get his break? Well, without giving away too many spoilers for next week’s lectionary text, yes. He did. In order to be abundantly available and to get through all the unknowns to come, Jesus needed to rest and pray. 

May you find time this week to begin a practice of seeing abundance when resources initially look scarce. May your compassion swell and grow, even in this difficult time, and may you discern when it’s time to find some quiet and pray. May your readings of the same old texts give fresh insight, and may you trust that what you have to offer in service to co-creating a new vision with God is enough. Amen.

We’ve been meeting out in my garden for the last few weeks, as we’ve unpacked parables that have had a seed theme. Two weeks ago, we talked about cultivating our soil, making sure we were ready for the Word of God. This soil cultivation is done by doing our own work, working the soil so that we are receptive for whatever seed God scatters among us, so that when it lands it can take root and weather all storms and droughts. Last week, we discussed what it feels like to be in the weeds. It’s feeling pretty weedy these days, and it’s hard not to ask God why evil and hardship are allowed to continue. A small explanation is offered in the parable of the wheat and weeds, it is that our roots are in the same soil as the roots connected to these difficult times. We are so important to God that God does not want to risk any of us being lost by pulling the weeds prematurely, our little rooty-tendrils wrapped around and intertangled with the roots that are holding in place the very things that we pray deliverance from. Instead, we are tended to in place, we are cared for by God who wants our success as we navigate hard things. So, this week, we have a handful of parables illustrating the Kingdom of Heaven, starting with… are you ready for it…

A mustard seed.

I know, shocking. Seeds.

But before we move onto some of the other wisdom offered by today’s readings, let’s not gloss over the mustard seed, even if it’s tempting because, well, we’ve probably all heard sermons on the mustard seed a billion times. This two-verse chunk from today’s Gospel reading has a lot to deconstruct within it. The word choices and the little details make it extra interesting when you sit to chew on it a bit. Especially if it’s deli mustard on whole wheat with turkey and melted cheese… Mmmm…

 First, let’s look at the mustard seed itself. Tiny. If you only had one single mustard seed, it would be easy to lose it. In this parable, Jesus tells us that someone has just one, and this person sows it in his field. The field is his, and by the use of the word “sow” we can guess this person probably has crops. This field is not likely a field that is unused, however, it is a little bizarre, isn’t it, that they sow only one seed? When I’m planting my garden, even if I’m not using the whole packet, I usually plant a few seeds. And I definitely don’t call it sowing. Not for my haphazard little plot. So, there’s already some dissonant language within this simple parable that tells us there’s something different here. Something that is slightly off.

Mustard, a favorite for about half of my household, was also used as a condiment in the ancient world. It also may have been used medicinally. But to put a single mustard seed in a field is weird, even knowing it would be used. Why not a whole field of mustard?

Then it grows up pretty huge. So big that birds nest in it. When we look back at our earlier weeks of seed stories, this seems like a bizarre placement for mustard. The other seed sown in the field would then be in less than ideal growing conditions once the mustard grew to it’s full height, taking most of the nutrients, it’s roots spreading and making it so the other crops have less room to grow, the massive height of it shading the other crops.

The kingdom of heaven is like…

…

…

like someone put a seed in a field that no one expected to be there, and no one noticed until it was so huge that it practically had its own ecosystem.

The next verse jumps to another analogy. A woman puts yeast into flour, leavening it. Okay, so this isn’t weird in our day of being able to buy self-rising flour, it seems like maybe even this woman is the inventor of self-rising flour, but let’s look at in context. Bread needed to be unleavened for the sabbath. This was an important piece of the spiritual ritual of the Jewish folks listening to Jesus give this message. Three measures isn’t just like, three cups of flour. It’s like, flour for 100 people. It’s a lot. In some translations, including the RSV, which is the one we have in our pews at Grace Community, instead of a woman putting yeast into flour and intentionally mixing it as the NRSV reads, it says, a woman took and hid leaven in three measures of flour. Hid. There’s something a little more subversive, a little…off-putting… about that wording. So she stashes some leaven in all the flour stores, and it spreads, until the next thing you know, it’s in everything.

A man finds a treasure, and buries it in a field. Then sells everything just to but the field with the buried treasure? Why? Why not just go home and sit and gawk at the treasure with all of his other stuff as well? There’s something bizarre going on here.

All of these scenarios are shocking. They require some form of patience, of some waiting time. Time for the seed to grow, for the flour to leaven, for escrow to close on the field. Anyone who has bought a house knows that’s the most uncertain, unsettling, long time of their entire existence. Not sure what the ancient version of escrow was, but certainly there is not an immediate opportunity for the man to enjoy the treasure he has found and buried. If you’ve been following along with what we’ve been doing for children’s time for the last few weeks, you’ve seen that we planted a seed and then checked on it every week. To watch all the videos right now in a row, it would seem pretty fast from initial sowing to the first shoots of the plant popping up, but trust me, in kid time (or impatient adult time) it felt like ages. Last week, showing the empty, boring, plain cup of dirt in the children’s time video felt anti-climactic. Like, womp womp, nothing’s happening. But this week, there was a sprout! There’s a wait, there’s anticipation, and there’s an element of surprise to God’s kingdom. I had no clue my nasturtium seeds would come up kind of purply gray. I was ready for bright green.

God’s creation, here on earth and beyond, defies what we think we know about it, and surprises us. What may start as our initial understanding of God’s love for us starts small and then is overwhelming in its abundance.

I was fully prepared to focus on the Matthew reading and just go from there this week, but yesterday while hiking, thunder crackling above, the greenness of the trees, ferns and moss dimmed by a sudden overcast, something (the holy spirit?) told me to re-look at the Romans reading. I had shoved the print out of today’s readings into my pack before we took off, so while walking, I revisited Romans. It hadn’t been an easy hike for me, my energy was off. Funky. Low. I could feel a headache coming on. Every single step was filled with “Ugh. I don’t wanna.” I can usually keep myself going by humming Taize songs or trying to remember the words to hymns (Yesterday it was “Everlasting Arms,” and somehow I could only remember “leeaaaaning, leaaaaning”). But even this, which I try to pass off as a pretty basic form of prayer and connecting to the divine, was not really working. It’s hard to be prayerful when you just have “dun dun duh duh duh, dun dun duh duh duh leaning on the everlasting arms” on loop without any of the substance. So that first line in today’s Roman reading grabbed me pretty immediately: “Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

I mean, it was practically like the Spirit heard my struggling through the hymn and sighed deeply and was like “Oh for cryin’ out loud, just read the Bible, Kim!”

And so there it was. The piece I had been looking for to bring more clarity to each of the seed stories over the last three weeks. They’ve taught us about how to be prepared, how to thrive under crummy conditions, and how to wait and be surprised, but what is it that’s so compelling that keeps us here, firmly planted among the weeds? Why do we want to make sure our hearts are ready for the Word? What could possibly be so amazing that we are willing to accept that a farmer willingly put a behemoth of a mustard bush in his field?

Romans 8:35 lists hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and sword as those things that might attempt to separate us from the love of Christ. Those sound a lot like the weeds, the rocky ground, the spiritual droughts, we might face, especially in these difficult times we are living in. However, the equivalent of the mustard tree-bush-birdhouse becomes apparent in the words that should shock us to our very core. If they don’t read them again, hear them again, take the “heard it before” blasé out of the equation: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, no height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I mean, that’s everything. Nor COVID, nor politics on Facebook, nor a divided nation, nor protests, nor tear gas, nor murder hornets—remember them?,—nor whatever August 2020 has in store, will be able to separate us from divine, unending, redemptive, reconciling, surprising love. That’s what’s planted in our fields, that’s the leaven that’s making its way through our flour, invisibly, quietly. That’s what we can expect at the end of all of this uneasy suspense. It’s the surprise we should have seen coming, but how can we ever expect such things when life has been so hard? And so we tend our soil. We pray and maintain connected to God, even when the weeds are thick around us—even if our prayer is feeble and the words aren’t right, as long as it’s the best one we’ve got. We remain ever-ready for what God has to offer us.

Love.

Love that is all-encompassing, bigger than we could ever imagine, and that will find us and stick to us no matter where we are or what the headlines are saying today. That’s the good news we receive this week. May you be covered by the astonishing, inseparable, and sometimes baffling love of God in Christ Jesus. Amen.