Losing Self, Finding Self

Losing Self, Finding Self, by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Matthew 16:21-28
An audio version of this sermon is available here.

Poor Peter. Sometimes being a disciple is so confusing.

In last week’s Gospel story, Peter was the first ever to recognize and say out loud that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God; and because of that, Jesus told Peter that he was blessed by God and had faith that would be the rock on which Jesus would build his entire church.

Then, in today’s story, Jesus begins to explain to his disciples what being the Messiah, the Son of the living God will mean: he must go to Jerusalem, and confront the chief priests and the Roman government, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again. And when Peter hears this, he takes Jesus aside, privately, and says to him “You shouldn’t say things like that; God forbid that you should die; you shouldn’t disappoint your disciples with such a downer of a message.” But Jesus turns and says to Peter “You’re talking like the enemy; you’re thinking in human terms, not divine terms; you’re a stumbling-block in my way” — and he calls all the disciples together and tells them “If you want to be my follower, you have to learn to deny yourself; the more you try to save your life the more you’ll lose it, but the more you lose your life for me the more you’ll save it.”

So one moment Peter is the Rock, and the next moment he’s a stumbling-block; one moment Peter’s faith is the foundation of the church, the next moment he is the enemy of Jesus’ mission. I can just imagine Peter saying “What’d I do? Was it something I said? What did I do wrong?”

Part of the problem here is that Peter is clinging to Jesus. Peter has just recognized Jesus as the Messiah, and Peter, like most Jews of his day, has some definite ideas of what the Messiah should be. The Messiah should come to vindicate God’s people. The Messiah should bring judgment to God’s enemies and reward to God’s righteous. The Messiah should reign forever in a kingdom of peace and justice, of right relationships in mutual well-being, a kingdom that would never ever ever fade away. Peter has definite expectations of what Jesus’ being Messiah should mean.

But it’s not just Peter’s expectations of Jesus that are at stake — Peter’s expectations for Peter are also on the line. If Jesus is the Messiah and Peter is the Rock, the Messiah’s right-hand-man, then what happens to Jesus will happen to Peter, too. If Peter’s image of Jesus is threatened, then Peter’s image of himself-with-Jesus is threatened. And Peter doesn’t want to think about what his life would be like if Jesus weren’t there: Peter has found in Jesus a teacher, a master, a healer, a friend; Peter has found that his life is more with Jesus in it than it ever had been before; Peter has come to trust that Jesus loves him, and he loves Jesus too, and that friendship, that compassion, that love makes Peter more himself than he ever could be just on his own. If Jesus dies, if Jesus isn’t going to be there anymore, then Peter will lose that self he has become. And that loss frightens Peter, losing himself like that scares Peter — and so Peter wants to cling to Jesus as hard as he can, so that he can cling to himself as hard as he can, and never have to fear losing the joy and security and love he’s come to know in being Jesus’ disciple.

There’s just one problem with that: Peter clings so hard to what is, he is not able to open up to what is yet to be. Peter clings so hard to his expectations for Jesus as a conquering Messiah, he’s not able to see the greater-than-expected promise in Jesus dying and rising again to transform all of life. Peter clings so hard to his image of himself as Jesus’ right-hand-man, he’s not able to imagine the even greater self, the apostle and preacher and teacher and healer, Jesus is inviting him to become. Peter will not let his expectations die, so he cannot be open to the greater possibilities for him God wants to bring to life.

And I think that is what Jesus is getting at when he gathers the rest of the disciples and talks about saving and losing life. The word we translate “life” here can also be translated “self” — and in that translation I think the saying makes even more sense. Jesus says “If you try to hold on to your self, you will lose your self; but if you can let go of the self you think you are now, you can discover in God an even greater self you can yet become.” Jesus’ call in the Gospel today is to be willing to let our expectations of ourselves as we are now die, so that we can be open to the new possibilities for us God wants to bring to life.

And if we can do that, if we can let go, if we can be willing to lose the selves we think we are, it is amazing what new selves we can become in Christ. I think of the woman I knew who said she had to give up thinking of herself as a hopeless drunk before she could discover a new self as someone in healthy recovery. Or the man whose heart attack made him question the go-go-go, push-push-push, always giving 110% executive he’d always been, and start looking for a new identity as someone who took the time to enjoy the people and the life around him. Or the teenager who went on a high school mission trip and had a profound experience that opened up a whole new way of seeing service to others as a personal career path. Or the family that gave up its high-spending consumer lifestyle to find a new way of living more simply and more genuinely with the earth and with their neighbors and with each other. Or the man who had a religious conversion experience — who never told me exactly what the experience was, but only said it made him feel like a new creation — and who went from just going to church as a matter of habit to really trying to live a Christlike life. Over the years so many people have shared with me stories of how they have been called to give up their self-expectations, how they’ve been put on the line of losing their old selves, and so have found a new self, a new life, living the way of love revealed in Jesus.

Jesus said “If you try to save your self, you will lose your self; but if you lose your self in me, you will find a greater self than you had ever imagined.” Let it be our prayer today that, as we offer ourselves to Christ in this Eucharist, we may each and all grow into the new life Christ offers us. Amen.

Defiant Love

Exodus 1:8-2:10
August 21, 2011


“Then a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.”


The Hebrew people have met a huge bump in the road. Here they are in Egypt and the last we heard about them back in Genesis, they were doing very, very well. They had thrived in Egypt under the ruler who had known Joseph. But time has moved on, new generations of people have been born and as Exodus begins a new king sits on the throne, a king who sees the Hebrew people radically differently, a king who did not know Joseph.


What the new king sees is a powerful people, a people who are strong and numerous and mighty. And he feels threatened by their presence. The king is worried that these Hebrew people will rise up against him, fight against him and run away from Egypt. And the new king moves into action the same way so many rulers before and after him have moved. He actively seeks to oppress these people in an effort to subdue them, to let them know who’s boss. Threatened and fearful, the king’s anxiety level increases dramatically which causes him to treat the Hebrew people ruthlessly, unjustly and disdainfully. And for a moment we wonder what will become of them.


Enter the women. When the king sends out word to the midwives Shiphrah and Puah that all baby boys born to the Hebrew women are to be killed, the midwives do not do what the king of Egypt commands them to do and let the boys live, knowing it might cost them their lives. These midwives in their radical devotion to God and maternal instincts seem to show no fear toward the king and use their power to bring forth life. On the other hand the king shows a deep fear of the Hebrews rebelling against him and tries to use his power for death. As the story moves along we see a Hebrew mother who chooses life for her son and a sister who chooses life for her brother as she places him in a basket among the reeds on the Nile. Soon after, Pharoah’s daughter sees this Hebrew baby and has compassion for him. What the king is determined to make bitter, these women make sweet. What the king is determined to divide, the women unify. It is as if there is a silent conspiracy of women, women who all in the face of great danger and at great risk, choose to defy the king, the deadly force, and choose life. And what is behind that choice of life is a defiant love, a divine love.


I remember a friend of mine telling me of a time when he, his wife and very young children were driving down the road in their car; the children were in the back seat. At some point, early in the journey no doubt, the son whined to his father about his sister, “She’s looking out my window!” The young boy had no idea at the time that his statement was so representative of the human condition. What the young boy saw was something rightfully his, his window being invaded and he felt threatened by it. He was already locking into the self-serving life!


The Hebrews’ liberation story is in direct conflict with our story of individual consumerism. The Exodus narrative commands us to switch stories if we have not already, to consider where we see oppression and act upon it, to alleviate suffering, to be bearers of God’s liberating power in the world. That we as individuals and as groups of people can be so easily threatened when we don’t get all that we think we are due often exposes a vulnerability within and a tendency to want to crush the threat, even if by passive means, which can lead to denigrating, oppressing and devaluing people. When we oppress or devalue others we cut ourselves off from our maker and fail to see God’s image in ourselves and in one another. Our world becomes smaller as we cut off life. This text from Exodus is calling us to see those in our midst who are hurting, who are oppressed, who are devalued, to see them the way the women in our story saw and make a way to give life in the midst of oppression, to use our power for good. Just as God acts through the courageous women of this story, God calls each and every one of us to be agents of social transformation, to bear light, to bring freedom and justice to those who have no voice.


This week at Trinity, many have been God’s agents of justice and love. One member has been writing her congressmen and even the President to express concerns about justice; your rector has been planning a 9/11 Commemoration service, which will include praying for all of us to be peacemakers; one member has begun organizing a fundraiser for our friends at a church in Honduras when he saw the need and heard that they would like to replace their dirt floor with a tile floor but lack the funds; just this week parishioners and friends from the community served over 150 meals to friends in our midst who cannot afford lunch right now; many parishioners in their work as teachers, nurses or just plain people reached out to the hurting to sweeten that which was bitter, to unify that which was divided and to lift up those who have been torn down.


It is a dangerous thing to allow ourselves to be God’s loving hands in the world. He won’t give us all the answers, sometimes He won’t let us even see the results, sometimes we don’t get a pat on the back, worse yet sometimes we suffer because we love! He requires a radical devotion for us to be his agents for love and justice in this world. And we do it because even though it seems mad at times, it is through the giving of ourselves that we become fully human. It is in giving of ourselves that we become our true selves. Jesus knew and understood this fully. He reached out to the loved and the unloved but seemed to have had a special eye for those who had no power, no voice and was willing to give his very life for all that we might all be redeemed through that love. Look and see and do what Jesus did..love!


Hadewijch of Antwerp, 13th c. poet and mystic:


The madness of love
is a blessed fate;
and if we understood this
we would seek no other:
it brings into unity
what was divided,
and this is the truth:
bitterness it makes sweet,
it makes the stranger a neighbor,
and what was lowly it raises on high.


Love is madness? Maybe. Love anyway. With every act of love, God’s salvation is at hand.


Amen.

God on the Waters

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Matthew 14:22-33
An audio version of this sermon can be found here

Our Gospel reading this morning follows immediately upon the Gospel we read last week: after feeding more than 5000 people starting with only five loaves and two fish, Jesus sends the crowd away, sends the disciples in the boat across the Lake of Galilee, and goes up by himself on the mountain to pray all night long. And in the darkness a storm comes up, the disciples’ boat is blown off course, and just before dawn Jesus comes to them, walking on the water. It’s a remarkable display of supernatural power — but for that very reason it also raises some interpretive questions. In a way, this miracle is very uncharacteristic of Jesus: most of Jesus’ miracles are very personal, very one-on-one, very much about making contact with someone, as when Jesus heals a person, or frees them from bondage to an unclean spirit, or enlightens their mind with divine wisdom. Most of Jesus’ miracles are gestures we can recognize as bringing the love of God to bear in an immediate way in a person’s concrete life. But this miracle seems different: walking on water seems more impersonal, more supernatural, less about making contact with someone than about showing off sheer power — this miracle seems more like a magic trick than a sign from God. And that’s why it’s important for us modern readers to know that this gesture of walking in the waters does in fact have a very specific biblical meaning.

You see, Jesus here is acting out in human terms, on a human scale, the traditional biblical image of God’s command over the sea. In ancient Hebrew thought, the sea often symbolized the powers of chaos and destructiveness, and God’s command of the sea signified creativity and wholeness and the order needed for right relationships. So the Creation story in Genesis begins with a watery chaos that is waste and void until God commands the ordered relationships of light and dark, night and day, dry land and ocean. And the Creation poem in Psalm 104 tells how God commanded a law for the sea, and set boundaries it could not pass, so that Creation would not be re-dissolved in chaos. And the Book of Exodus tells of God’s victory at the Red Sea, when God commanded the sea to open up and create a dry path for the Israelites to walk, while the Egyptian army was swamped and overwhelmed. And the Book of Joshua tells how God commanded the waters of the River Jordan to stop flowing so that the Israelites could end their wilderness wandering by walking across the river into the land of promise. And the prophet Isaiah even identifies God as the One “who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters.” Time and again in the First Testament, commanding a way in the chaos of the sea is how God reveals himself to be God — so when Jesus commands the sea and walks a way on the stormy waters, he is revealing that he comes in the power and authority and creativity of God. Walking on the water isn’t  just a magic trick, it isn’t just a gratuitous display of supernatural power — it is a sign that God is present and active and creating and redeeming in the human life and work of Jesus.

And the really fascinating thing about this story is that Jesus not only reveals God’s power when he walks on the water, but he shares God’s power as well. Peter, afraid that he is seeing Jesus’ ghost, calls out to the apparition — in one of those marvelous moments that Peter has, when he blurts something out without stopping to think about it, when he opens his mouth and inserts his foot and pulls out faith — Peter calls out, “Lord, if it really is you, call me to come to you, and I will trust you.” And Jesus calls to Peter, and Peter — in an act of courage and trust far greater than many of us would be able to muster — Peter steps out of the boat and begins to walk across the water toward Jesus. In that moment, the creating and sustaining power of God made manifest in commanding the sea, the creating and sustaining power of God made manifest in Jesus, that same creating and sustaining power of God is made manifest in Peter. Peter, with all his flaws and all his foibles; Peter, with all his human shortcomings and all his human accomplishments; Peter becomes the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual creating grace of God.

To be sure, Peter has his moment of doubt and fear, his confidence wavers, and he begins to sink, until Jesus takes him by the hand and lifts him up. But as long as Peter is focused on Jesus, as long as Peter puts even his fear and his doubt and the powers of chaos in the larger context of trusting in Jesus, then Peter walks on the water, then Peter shares in Jesus’ sharing in the creating and sustaining power of God.

And that, I think, is the real point of this whole miracle story. It’s not just that Jesus does something remarkable, but that Jesus empowers Peter to do something remarkable. And that makes this entire Gospel story one big invitation to disciples — an invitation to us — to be like Peter: it’s an invitation to    us to remember that, as flawed and foibled as we are, we can focus our vision on Jesus, we can put our trust in the creating and sustaining power of God revealed in Jesus, and therefore we can step out of the boat, we can step out in faith. This story is an invitation to us to let God’s creating and sustaining power be revealed in us, so that we can stand firm in the midst of storm and confusion, so that we can be strong against the powers of chaos and destructiveness, so that we can bring forth the new possibilities, the new right-relationships, the new hope, the new love, the new life, that God wants to bring forth in us. This Gospel is not just a story of a miracle of Jesus; it’s a promise of a miracle of God empowering creating grace in us.

And when God’s miracle of creating grace is in us, then we can be empowered to make a way in the chaos in all sorts of situations. We can be empowered to make a way to forgive each other and heal old hurts and reconcile relationships, just as God forgives and heals and reconciles us. We can be empowered to make a way to care for the environment, to work for the well-being of the forests and the mountains and the rivers and the sky, just as God cares for all creation. We can be empowered to make a way to bring forth all our best gifts, all our best abilities, all our capacity for love and joy and generosity and creativity — we can be empowered to grow into the whole people God wants us to be, just as we pray Derek will grow as we baptize him here today. We can be empowered to make a way to go forth into the world — into our community and our state and our nation and all the nations — we can be empowered to go forth even in the midst of credit downgrades and governmental gridlock and societal confusion everywhere — we can be empowered to go forth into the world to speak and vote and make economic decisions and use our influence and act and to make ways that build up peace and bring about justice and promote the common good of every human being as a child of God. In this miracle story God promises to empower us, so that we, with Jesus, can act out in human terms, on a human scale, God’s own creating and redeeming work for the world.

All we have to do is get out of the boat.

Multiplication of Love

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Matthew 14:13-21
Listen to an audio version of this sermon here

Our Gospel reading this morning tells the story of one of the best-known of all Jesus’ miracles: it’s a story often called “The Miracle of the Multiplication of the Loaves,” and it’s a story that is told, in one form or another, in all four Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all have their own versions of this miracle story — Mark and Matthew even have two versions apiece. It’s one of those stories from the Gospel we know so well, we might be tempted to think we know it all.

But there are some interesting interpretive questions we can raise about this miracle story. If we pay really close attention to the text and the context, we can do some very interesting things by asking “Just who does this miracle?” and “Just what sort of miracle is it?”

Here's the scene: Jesus and his disciples, after a long period of teaching and preaching to big crowds, are attempting to withdraw into a quiet place, so they can pray and meditate and recharge their batteries. So they get into a boat and push out into Lake Galilee to look for a quiet spot; but the crowd sees them going, and they rush around the shore on foot and get there ahead of the boat; so that when Jesus and the disciples arrive, the crowd is already there. And Jesus has compassion on them, and he heals their sick, and he teaches them all day long.

And at the end of the day, when everyone is tired and hungry, the disciples come to Jesus and say, “It’s getting late, and we’re out in the middle of nowhere, and we haven’t got any food; it’s time to send the crowd away, so that they can walk back to those villages they passed through and buy some bread or some falafel or something.” The disciples are genuinely concerned about the crowd, they really don’t want the people to become weak with hunger or exhausted with long walking. But the disciple’s concern only goes so deep; they apparently don’t stop to think that sending the crowd on a long walk home when it’s getting dark will create hardships of its own. And the disciples are probably also thinking about themselves, at least as much or more than their thinking about the crowd: they’re tired, they’re hungry, they’d just as soon not be doing crowd-control anymore, they want to settle down for some quiet time of their own with Jesus. But Jesus’ care for the crowd goes deeper than that: “They don’t need to go away,” Jesus says; “this is a good place for them to be, where I can teach them and heal them and show them God’s love. You give them something to eat.”

Now, at this point I imagine the disciples are just about having kittens. They’re thinking: What? Us feed all those people? With what? They say to Jesus, “All we have are five little loaves of bread and a couple of small dried fish. You want us to feed all these people with this?” The mere thought of having to do so much with so little is kind of terrifying.

But Jesus says, “Bring your food here to me.” And the disciples have to give up their five loaves and two fish. Even though it clearly won’t be enough, and even though it will leave the disciples themselves without food, they have to be willing to give to Jesus even what little they have. And Jesus takes it, and blesses it, and breaks it — and then Jesus gives it back to the disciples to give to the crowd. And it’s when that happens, it’s while the disciples are distributing bread and fish to the crowd, that they realize something remarkable is going on: no matter how much they give, they are not running out; even though there isn’t enough food, everybody is getting something, and nobody is getting left out. The miracle happens not so much when Jesus breaks the bread, but when the disciples are sharing the bread. From one point of view, the miracle in the story is not so much that Jesus feeds five thousand people, but the miracle is that Jesus empowers the disciples to feed five thousand people. If we ask “Who does this miracle?”, it isn’t just Jesus, but Jesus and the disciples.

And that in turn raises the question “What sort of miracle is this?” One interpretation is that it is a physical, supernatural miracle, in which the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy is superseded, and the bread and the fish physically multiply.

But there is another interpretation of this story, which has been in circulation in the church for nearly two hundred years, that suggests a miracle of a different sort. Historians say that it was common practice in Jesus' day for anyone who was going away from home for more that a couple of hours to pack some little bit of food with them: some bread or some lentils or some salted fish, carried in a little pouch on their belt. In those days people got around mostly by walking; so if you left home to run a bunch of errands or go to the next village to visit someone, you couldn’t be sure just when you’d get home again; it might be well after mealtime, you might get pretty hungry. And there weren’t fast food joints in strip malls on every other corner on the roads of Galilee; so if you weren’t sure you’d be home at mealtime, you couldn’t be sure you could buy food anywhere at mealtime, either. If you were going to leave home for a while, it was just prudent to take some food with you. So it is likely that everyone in that crowd had some food; but they were all afraid that if they took out their food, other people would want it, and they’d be forced to share it, and then there wouldn’t be enough left for them. It was the peoples’ own fear and greed that kept them hiding and hoarding their food for themselves. But when the crowd sees the disciples beginning to distribute five loaves and two fish that everyone knows won’t be enough, when they see the disciples being willing to do at least that much, they are all moved by this generosity, and they are all inspired to bring out their food and share it too. In this reading, the disciples keep passing out food and never running out, because everyone else is passing out food, too.

If we read the story this way, what happens is not so much a physical miracle as it is a moral miracle. It is a miracle of the heart rather than a miracle of matter and energy. It’s not just a miracle of multiplication of loaves, but a miracle of multiplication of love. Who does this miracle, and what sort of miracle is it? — Jesus and the disciples and the crowd do this miracle together, and it is a miracle of compassion and sharing and creating right-relationships and love.

And what makes that miracle Good News is that that is precisely the sort of miracle we can do with Jesus, and Jesus can do with us, too. The Spirit of Christ can inspire us, like the disciples, like the crowd, so that we bring forth what little we have — even when it is clear that what we have is not enough — and when we share what we have in the Name of Christ, then God’s grace will make it enough, God’s grace will make us enough, so that together we may do the gracious, compassionate, loving will of God.

And some of that miracle is happening right here, right now, in this Eucharist. In this celebration of the Holy Communion, each one of us brings some little thing of what we have, and when we share it in the Name of Christ, God’s grace makes it enough to nourish us in the Body and Blood of Christ, to nourish us to be the Body of Christ for the world. We bring a voice to sing, a little bit of bread and wine carried up to the altar, a pledge check or a gift in support of the church given in the offering, a prayer or a thanksgiving or an intercession for someone we know and care about who’s in need of help, a heart and a mind and a spirit yearning to know God’s love — we bring what little we have, and we give it to Jesus, and on this altar Jesus takes it and blesses it and breaks it and gives it back to us, so that we can turn and give it again to those around us — and together Jesus and we and the world make the miracle, so that the hungry can be fed, and the suffering can be comforted, and the oppressed can be set free, and the lonely can be welcomed, and the angry can be reconciled, and the lost can be found, and the joyous can redouble their joy.

That is the miracle of the multiplication of love narrated in our Gospel today. That is the miracle of the multiplication of love we can live in Christ’s Name every day. Amen.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ?

Romans 8:26-39
The Rev. Shelby Ochs Owen at Trinity Church
July 24, 2011

The apostle Paul has a rhetorical “hay day” with the book of Romans.  Paul, a scholar, a Pharisee, and an apostle often argues amazingly complex theological defenses throughout his letter to the Romans.  Paul uses ancient Greco-Roman rhetorical techniques in his discourse.  For many of us who are not trained in techniques of legal argument or debate, or rhetoric, many of Paul’s words leave our minds in a tangle, with us asking, “REALLY, Paul? Are you serious?”  Kathy Grieb, former seminary professor of mine and author, gives many of us hope as she suggests that Paul’s clever and complex discourse is all based on a great story, the narrative of what God has done in Christ.  If you were to read the entire book of Romans you might see how he weaves the salvation story throughout his argument for the righteousness of God.  For Paul, the righteousness of God is understood primarily as seen in the faithfulness of Jesus, in his willing obedience to suffer death on a cross.#  Today’s passage can best be understood in that context of the faithfulness of Jesus.

Today’s reading from Romans is one of the most hopeful passages in Scripture!  (It is no wonder that this passage is often selected for funerals)  “If God is for us, who is against us?”  Could it be that the answer is that it just does not matter who or what is against us if God is for us?  If God is for us, then we have the Ultimate Being watching our back!  We have Jesus Christ in our court at all times!  And because Jesus was and is faithful we can trust in his goodness towards us.  “He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not also give us everything else?”  “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

The story behind these powerful words is the story of Paul himself.   Of the seven difficulties he lists, he himself has personally experienced six of them!  If you read the Book of Acts you will see that Paul, in his zeal to tell the story of Jesus, the story of salvation to those in his path, was stoned, dragged out of cities, imprisoned, ridiculed, maligned and scoffed at, attacked by crowds, beaten, stripped of clothing, arrested, and shipwrecked. He most likely perceived that he would eventually be martyred as well.  So how, if he had these difficult experiences, how could he be so sure God had his back, that God was in his court? Well, if we read more about his life, we can see that with each event, God was very present, encouraging and supporting and loving Paul.  Somehow through it all, Paul knew in the depths of his being that God loved him as God loved all the world and would see him through, that NOTHING would separate him from the love of Christ.   Paul’s confidence and trust were in the love of God even while he knew suffering was real.  Paul was not one to let his head float in the clouds; he was a realist.  But Paul understood that the reality of suffering and sin and death were subject to a greater reality, the reality of the love of Christ.

In what may have been his last letter, the aging Paul writes God’s story as it relates to his own story. This is no newby to the faith!   He has not only endured hardship but he has experienced the amazing love of God. The Christians in Rome to whom he writes are a very particular group of people who have very real problems.  They have their own story.  Paul’s own faithfulness points to Christ’s faithfulness. Paul helps point the Christians in Rome in the direction of the faithfulness of Christ.

Recently I was at the beach with 14 members of my family.  One day several had already gone down to the beach ahead of me.  I knew they would have set up a beige tent somewhere on the beach.  As soon as I got to the beach I saw the beige tent and started walking toward it. As I was walking toward that tent I happened to glance over in the other direction and noticed someone at another beige tent waving me down.  My sister.  Bringing me in.  I wondered when I would have discovered I was with the wrong group of people if she hadn’t waved her arms so wildly and pointed the way for me.

I think Paul was pointing the way to the Romans, bringing them into a stronger faith, helping them realize that whatever hardships they were enduring, God was still on their side, that God really was for them, that he had their backs, that God really was in their court and could be trusted. And Paul had a certain authority about sharing his faith story precisely because he had endured so much.  To hear from any who suffer and reflect the love of Christ makes most of us sit up and take notice.  When any of us go to Haiti or Honduras or anywhere else in the world where there is extreme poverty and we hear from the local folks how great God is, we sit up and take notice; when we hear from guests at noon day lunch how God is getting them through, we sit up and take notice; when a brother suffering an addiction turns to God and shares his story of healing, or when a friend knows she is dying and she looks us square in the eye to tell us her faith is still strong, we sit up and take notice. Perhaps our own suffering has greater purpose than we have imagined?

What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will 105 degree heat (I sure hope not!)?   Will failure, disappointment, tremendous mistakes, disease, unemployment, divorce, depression, or aging separate us from the love of Christ?  We all have a story; we have our great gifts and our deep sorrows, our successes and our failures, we all triumph in some way and we all sin; we all have joys and we all suffer.  We are all in the midst of our story right now.  When we come up for communion or receive it in our pew, we are saying to God, “YES! With open hands and open heart  I want your divine story to continue in me and to live knowing you indeed have my back, that you are always in my court, that your love for me will never fail. And with that sure confidence we may go out into the world as God’s faithful instruments, trusting in a God who can be trusted!  

Who or what will separate us from the love of Christ?  Absolutely nothing.

Weeds, Wheat, and Which is Which

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
An audio version of this sermon is available here.

If we were to take the basic message of Jesus’ parable in our Gospel reading today and squeeze it into one sentence, it might come out saying something like this: “You’ve got to take the bad with the good.” Jesus’ image of a field where wheat and weeds are all growing together is an image of a world in which good things and bad things, good events and bad events, good people and bad people, are all tangled up together, and in a very basic way you just can’t get one without the other. The parable of the weeds in the wheat is a down-to-earth way of saying “You’ve got to take the bad with the good.”

Of course, if that’s all the parable says, it’s understandable if our first reaction is, “Well, duh!” We don’t need a parable to tell us that. We already know that there are good people and not-so-good-people and downright evil people in the world; any casual glance at the television news or cursory scan of today’s newspaper will tell us that. We already know that our lives encompass good memories and bad memories, that we’ve made smart decisions and stupid decisions, that each and every one of us have done things that have led to creativity and accomplishment and success for ourselves and for others and we’ve done things that have turned out to be hurtful and damaging and destructive to ourselves and to others. We don’t need a parable to tell us we have to take the bad with the good; we have our noses rubbed in it every day.

And yet perhaps we do need to be told that — or at least reminded of it from time to time. Because we human beings have a pervasive tendency to want to take the good in life, and to shuffle the bad off to someplace else. We only want half of the equation. It makes me think of a Peanuts cartoon I saw years ago: Charlie Brown and Lucy are talking together, and Charlie Brown says something about life having its ups and downs, and Lucy goes off into a tirade: “Why!? Why does life have to have ups and downs? Why can’t I just have ups? Why can’t I just go from an up to an even upper up?” Lucy carries on until Charlie Brown just puts his head down and says, “Good grief!” We tend not to want the bads with the goods; we want goods, and then we want even gooder goods.

In that respect we’re kind of like the farm workers in the parable. When they see the weeds growing along with the wheat, they immediately want to go out and pull up all the weeds. They want the field for the wheat alone; they want just the good stuff, without any of the wasteful, futile, unproductive stuff they know is out there.

But the householder in the parable knows better. “No,” he tells the farmworkers, “you can’t go pull up the weeds; because if you do, you’ll end up damaging the wheat, too.” And there are a couple of reasons why the householder says that. First, wheat is a kind of domesticated grass, and grasses grow with extensive, delicate, complex root systems: grasses have lots of little roots that spread out and intertwine with other roots and rhyzomes around them. If the farmhands were to go pull up the weeds, chances are they’d damage the root systems of the wheat plants, too. They might want to do good, but they’d wind up unintentionally doing harm. And to make matters more complicated, there are some weeds that look an awful lot like wheat as long as the plants are still young and growing — you can’t tell which is weed and which is wheat until the plants have reached their full maturity and have become everything they’re going to become. If the farmhands were to go out and pull up the young plants now, chances are they’d end up pulling up some weeds and pulling up some wheat and letting some wheat grow and letting some weeds grow — and the net result might be worse for the field than it was in the first place. There just isn’t any way to separate the weeds from the wheat without doing some unintended damage along the way; the good and the bad are too deeply intertwined to have one without the other. So the householder says, “Let them both grow up together; let each plant become what it can become; don’t try to judge them too quickly; and in the harvest, in the end, when everything is complete, then we can tell which is which.”

And that, it seems to me, is the real wisdom of the parable, that’s the thing we do need a parable to tell us. It’s not just the platitude that you have to take the bad with the good; but the message is that sometimes you can’t tell in advance what will turn out to be bad and what will turn out to be good, and therefore you shouldn’t rush to judgment between them. Our first tendency is to be like the farmhands; but the parable tells us that God is like the householder, God is merciful and patient, God always allows things and people and events to grow to the fullness of all they can be before God judges them fruitful or futile — and the parable invites us to be godly in that way, too.

And the really remarkable grace in that invitation is the way it encourages us to discover that some things we thought had been weeds really turn out to be wheat — how some of the events and experiences we go through seem difficult or damaging or disappointing at the time, and yet grow in us into bearing the seeds of of wisdom and compassion and love. When I served a congregation in Michigan I knew a family who had a child with Down’s syndrome. They already had a little girl and a little boy, about 5 years old and 3-1/2 years old — just about Maggie and Aidan’s ages when we knew them. And their first two kids were active and energetic and busy — and quite enough of a handful to take care of as they were. And both parents had jobs, and worked long hours to make ends meet, and shuffled their work hours around so that they could share more equally in caring for the kids and didn’t have to farm them out to childcare very often. And money was kind of tight in their household. And then they got the news from the amniocentesis that their third child would be born with Down’s syndrome — and while they couldn’t predict in advance how severe his mental disability would be, the doctor had to be honest with the family that he would never be “normal” like their other children. Well of course the news was devastating to them. Their family life was full — sometimes even tense — as it was; how could they possibly add a special-needs child and have any hope of making it work? It was not an easy thing for them. It meant extra childcare and extra medical bills and special equipment around the house; it meant having to do some things twice as slowly with their new baby as they had done with their other kids; it meant teaching their older children that their baby brother required special attention and care, even from them — and it all took its toll, it all added its measure of anxiety and frustration to the lives that they had known.

But after a time they began to find something else happening with them as well. They found that, because they had to pay extra attention to their third child, they were developing the habit of paying extra attention to each other as well. They found that, because it took longer to do things with their third child, they were slowing down, not rushing around so much, taking longer to do things, and to enjoy things, with each other as well. They found that their third child laughed more easily and hugged more often, and they all began to learn to laugh more and to hug more from him. Over time, they found that their third child, their “problem” child, their “disabled” child, was teaching them, was bringing them a gift of patience and wisdom and compassion and love, a gift they never would have known without him. What had seemed like weeds growing in the field of their family life turned out to be the finest wheat, the bread of a communion that went deeper than anything they’d ever known.

The parable of our Gospel today tells us that in our life the good and the bad, the difficult and the joyful, the seemingly futile and the ultimately fruitful, are very deeply intertwined, and it takes mercy and patience and compassionate judgment to let things grow to their rightful harvest. And the promise of the Gospel today is that, with the mercy and the patience and the grace that come from God, even some of the weediest parts of our lives can grow into the wheat of saving and redeeming love.

That’s the love that Jesus shows for us; and that’s the love we all can share in Jesus. Amen.

God in the Midst

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67 , Romans 7:15-25a , and Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
An audio version of this sermon is available here.

Our readings from Scripture this morning are all over the place. We’ve got: a historical narrative from a highly patriarchal culture about negotiating for a wife, an almost frighteningly incisive depiction of a psyche divided against itself, and comfortable words from Jesus — comfortable words that are prefaced by some pretty harsh criticism. All over the place. What in the world could tie these three readings together?

Well, I think what ties these readings together is God in the world. Each of these passages, each in its own peculiar way, speaks to us of how the changing, confusing, conflicting details of our lives can be held together by recognizing God with us in the midst of things.

The servant sent out by his master Abraham to find a wife for Isaac is anxious about managing all the conflicting details of his task — until he prays that God will show him through a simple act of kindness, something so simple as a woman offering water to his camels, that she is the one God has chosen to be Isaac’s wife. When Rebekah shows him that kindness, he knows she is the one, and he is able to move from anxiety to action, he is able to make the bridal offer, because through prayer he has recognized God with him in the midst of ordinary things.

That same presence of God in the midst of things is what saves Paul in his struggle with the self divided against itself. Paul describes in this passage a classic psychological dilemma: on the one hand he knows what is good and loves what is good and wants to do what is good; on the other hand when he tries to do what is good, something evil turns out instead. There is a power in his members that is at war with the guidance of his mind, he says; there are appetites and desires and impulses that pull him this way and that, and the welter of all these different drives is beyond his ability to bring into one single coordinated purpose in life. It sounds to me like what Buddhists call “the monkey mind,” the tendency of our attention to jump around from one thing to the next, always picking up shiny objects but never settling down into the centeredness of compassion. “Wretched man that I am!” Paul exclaims from the tug of his conflicted impulses, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” “Thanks be to God,” he says, “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Paul realizes release from the distraction of many desires comes from recognizing God with us in Jesus in the midst of the multiplicity of life.

What that means is spelled out in more detail in our Gospel, in the contrast Jesus makes between the way of life John the Baptist taught, and the way of life Jesus himself teaches.  John came fasting, teaching a way of asceticism, teaching that the way to get close to God is to get away from the world. The people recognized John’s way — fasting and withdrawing from the world were standard religious practices — but they also thought John’s way was too hard, too inconvenient, too extreme: he’s crazy, they said, he’s got a demon, he’s too much for us. Jesus, on the other hand, taught a different way: Jesus taught a way of engaging with the world in order to recognize God’s presence in the world. Instead of fasting, Jesus ate and drank; instead of withdrawing to a wilderness riverbank, Jesus sat at table with tax collectors and sinners and Pharisees and ordinary folk; instead of trying to get away from the world in order to get close to God, Jesus enacted the reign of God right there within the world. The people didn’t understand that: they accused Jesus of being a glutton and a drunkard; they thought Jesus enjoyed food and drink and people just to gratify his own desires, just for his monkey mind; they did not realize that Jesus enjoyed food and drink and people because he always recognized in them the goodness and the wisdom and the presence of God. Jesus’ way of spiritual growth was to recognize God in the midst of things, and to love God in the things and to love the things in God.

That is the yoke of Jesus that is easy. That is the burden of Jesus that is light. That is the rest Jesus promises for our souls. All the many appetites are resolved into one love when we see all things in God; and we are released from the restlessness of distracted desires, released from the jumpiness of the monkey mind, released from the anxiety of not knowing if we can make the right choices and accomplish our tasks, released to be centered and focused, at the still point of the turning world, souls from which actions can come forth with purpose and integrity and grace. “Come to me,” Jesus says, “and learn from me to get close to God in the midst of the world.”

And getting close to God in the midst of the world is a spiritual practice, a meditative technique, that we can actually learn and develop. Years ago I was introduced to a book by Avery Brooke called How to Meditate Without Leaving the World. In that book she described a very simple yet very powerful practice for doing spiritual meditation with material objects: a candle, a leaf, a cloud, a shoe, a vista from a mountaintop, a photograph of someone you love, just about any object you can think of. In this meditation you focus your attention on your object and ask four questions: “What is this thing? What does it mean? What is God saying to me through it? How will I respond to God?” That’s it — four simple questions. Yet focusing the attention on one object and opening the imagination with questions has a wonderful way of quieting the monkey mind and giving rest to our souls as we recognize God with us in the midst of things.

There was a time I had a difficult decision to make. And the more I thought about this decision the more difficult it became: I could visualize all these possible choices before me, and I could visualize all these possible consequences that could follow from the choices — and some of those consequences were not very pretty. It was like my monkey mind was jumping around from one thought to the next; I wanted to do what was good but I didn’t know how; and my restless anxiety about my decision just got worse and worse and worse. At one point I just set it all aside and went for a walk. I ended up in a field, and there was an oak tree growing right in the middle of the field, and as I looked at that oak tree I began to do the four-point meditation with it. As I observed the tree and asked what it meant, I realized that there was a whole lot of the tree I couldn’t see, that for all the branches I saw above ground there was an equal amount of tree below ground, the whole branching root system that supported and sustained the tree. And the invisible part of the tree was just as important as the visible part. What God said to me through that tree was that there was an invisible part of my decision, that for all the branching possibilities that I could visualize there was an equal branching of support and sustaining in the invisible grace of God. No matter what decision I made, God would still be there; even if the choice I made turned out to be really stupid and wrong, God would still say “Okay, you kind of blew that one; let’s try this instead,” and God would still be there. And as I recognized God with me in that meditation on the oak tree, all my anxiety about my decision, all the restlessness of my monkey mind, just sort of faded away, and my soul came to rest, and from that still point I could decide to act with clarity and integrity and compassion. My decision did turn out to have a few unforeseen consequences, but they weren’t so bad as I had feared, and the grace of God got me through them, too. That simple meditation helped me know what to do, it helped rescue me from the distraction of conflicting impulses, it helped bring rest to my soul and let me engage the world — and all because it helped me recognize God with me in the midst of things.

So I commend that meditation practice to you. I invite you to try it sometime — sometime this very weekend. Sometime during this holiday — perhaps later today, perhaps tomorrow, maybe in the early morning, maybe during a picnic, maybe in the middle of fireworks — but sometime in this holiday weekend I want you to try this meditation for yourself. Pick an object, any object at all, and ask about it “What is this thing? What does it mean? What is God saying to me in it? What am I going to do about it?” Let God be with you in the midst of such things, giving your soul rest from the restlessness of distracted desires, helping you to more deeply engage the world.

Jesus says, “Come to me, you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and you will find rest for your souls.” May we answer Jesus’ call, and in Jesus may we come to know God right in the midst of things. Amen.