The Kingdom of God is Growing Wild

Mark 4:26-34

June 14, 2015

Pr. June's garden.
Neat and tidy. A lot of work.

We have been in our house for three summers.

And this is the third summer 

I’ve tried to grow

some vegetables in a garden.

The last two years 

I got about 6 mutant, giant zucchini,

a few pitiful tomatoes and a lot of leaves.

I tried something different this year

and maybe things are looking better.

We’ll find out later this summer.

So to plant a garden, I read a bit about it

and I’ve gotten some advice from neighbors.

All different by the way.

And I added sand and fertilizer

and planted one thing here, but not over there.

Whenever you have a garden,

you think about it, you worry about it.

You fuss over it, trying to do the right thing

at the right time to get the right results.

That is what farming and gardening is like.

Farmers have to do the right things,

they have to hope for enough rain to wet everything

but not enough rain to wash everything away.

They have to put enough fertilizer, but not too much,

Enough sun, but not so much heat that everything burns.

It’s a fussy business.

Lots of worrying, especially if you have your

life invested in your crops like farmers do.

I think that a lot of pastors and religious people

kind of see their job as gardeners or farmers.

We read and look and ask for advice.

When do you have confirmation?

What do you do for service projects?

What hymnal should we use?

What classes should we teach?

Church councils discuss staffing

and facilities and outreach ministries

and worship times and children’s programming.

If we just get the right formula,

if everything comes together,

then it might be what we want it to be.

Then God’s work will get done.

It’s a fussy business.

And if you read things in Christian Magazines

or on the internet, or listen to conversations between

church leaders or pastors, the prevalent message we’re sharing

is that the church crop isn’t doing well right now.

Most articles roaming around the internet

have Chicken Little titles like

“Why the Christian Church is dying”

“five reasons your church is dying”

“How you can prevent your church from dying”

  

And it’s true, to some extent.

The church does not look like it once did.

Christianity does not have the prestige the power,

the people, the money that it once had.

Lots of churches are irrelevant to a lot of people.

So we rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

And we get more fussy

just trying to figure out what’s we’ve done wrong.

We like to think that God’s work is somehow

in our hands, in our control,

that it comes down to us.

But Jesus says the Kingdom of God is not like this.

Jesus says that the Kingdom of God

is like someone scattering seed on the ground.

They scatter the seeds and then they go inside

and sleep and rise and on and on

and then one day the plant is just grown.

There’s no worry and no fuss at all.

Throw the seeds, go inside, come outside, and harvest.

it must have seemed like a dream to those farmers listening.

Jesus says the kingdom of God is like this.

And just to stress this,

he tells them another parable.

The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.

A very small seed, that grows into the tallest of “shrubs.”

Which is a weird turn of phrase.

  

We’ve talked about this mustard shrub before.

It was a really undesirable plant.

It was invasive and smelly.

It’s actually so invasive that

there was a Jewish law that you couldn’t

plant it in your fields because

it could infest everything including your neighbor’s field.

It was called “a malignant weed

with dangerous takeover properties.”

I’m sure that when Jesus said
“the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed”

those agrarian people were groaning

like, “Oh no. Don’t plant that. That gets out of control fast.”

So the kingdom of God is less like my garden

that I fuss and watch and pay attention to.

And it’s more like this part of my yard

which grows and grows without me doing anything.

The vines strangling the pine tree,

these large thistle weeds, keep on springing up

Pr. June's wild, unruly weeds.
No plans or work required.

no matter what we end up doing

all we can do is put some chicken wire up

so that the dog stays out of it.

It’s completely out of our control.

It’s thriving and doing 

its thing without any help.

And even when we try to thwart it

and tame it and redirect it, it still keeps going.

That’s what God’s kingdom is like.

The church might need constant fussing

to try and keep up with God’s kingdom.

But God’s kingdom, God’s work,

we don’t have to worry about .

That’s growing all the time,

out of our control and doing wonderful things.

And when God’s kingdom does grow,

Maybe it’s like that mustard shrub -

maybe it doesn’t grow exactly where we want it to be,

maybe it doesn’t attract the kind of creatures that we think it should.

maybe it doesn’t do the things that we want it to do.

So maybe instead of just watching the church for growth

and wishing things were like they were before.

We should be looking all around us

to see where God’s Kingdom and

God’s work is happening

not just in the pre-ordained safe spots where we plant things,

but seeing where God is working  and growing

and taking over uninvited, opportunistically,

where it’s growing wild.

Maybe at a school where someone’s sticking up for someone else.

Maybe at a hospital where people are cared for.
Maybe in an apartment where people are watching out for one another.

Maybe in a food pantry where people are talking to one another.

Maybe in a bar where people are supporting one another in their lives.

This is what the kingdom of God is like.
It’s God’s.

The Spirit of God moves where it wants to.

It works where we don’t work, whether or not we’re watching.

As people who are alive in the Spirit

our job is not  fuss over it. our job is to notice  where the Spirit is going

Try to catch up with it, embrace it, love it, look with wonder at it

and then reap the harvest of God’s work all around us.

Our Spirit is Being Renewed

2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1

June 7, 2015

The Gospel reading for today is difficult.

There one part is almost as complex as the other,

Jesus family tries to restrain him,

they say that he’s out of his mind.

There’s that whole thing that Jesus says

about the Holy Spirit which no one’s

ever given a satisfying explanation for.

And then at the end Jesus

pretty much says that his family is not his family.

Hard stuff.

So that’s why I’m going to focus on the 2^nd Corinthians text.

Like all of the New Testament writings,

we don’t know everything about the

situation surrounding the letter.

Most of what we know comes from the letter itself

that Paul is writing to a church in Corinth

that he helped start.

But what is apparent is that Paul and his people

have seen a lot of hardship prior to this letter.

They have been arrested and beaten

Cursed at and called names.

He and his travel companions the same.

All for the sake of the gospel.

In the opening paragraph he writes:

“We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,-- of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself.”

My guess is he looked a felt pretty terrible

and that word had  gotten around that

he was not doing well at all.

It must have made people question

the work they were doing,

the risks they were taking,

Paul’s authority and the job he was doing.

It may even have made them question the gospel they were sharing.

But Paul tells his audience

that they should not be fooled by

his physical reality. He writes:

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed…”

And that is a testament to

the power of the Spirit that lives in Paul.

It’s almost as if he has two realities, two tracks.

He doesn’t give much credence to outer -  the superficial

criteria of success that rules the rest of the world.

The world might see broken clay jars,

but Paul recognizes the spirit that’s held in it.

God’s Spirit gives us hope that goes beyond

our physical realities.

We have hope that’s eternal, that doesn’t

depend on our money, or comfort, or health.

The most inspirational stories

are those of people who overcome

physical and environmental adversities

and still have a drive to work

and make a difference, who still have joy.

We admire people like Helen Keller

who was born deaf and blind

learned to communicate and became

and inspirational writer

and a women’s rights activist.

Or Chris Gardner the man who

was homeless, raising his son

on the streets in San Francisco living in

bathrooms and train stations

while he was working at the same

time as a stock broker trying to

earn enough to afford an apartment.

Who now owns a huge company

and gives inspirational talks,

and is a strong advocate for the homeless.

And the world admires Mlala the Pakistani girl

who was shot  by the Taliban for talking about advancing

women’s education, but was not deterred.

She still came back to keep her work going

and won the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17.

We admire these people specifically because

they have seen hardship. Because

they have physical limitations or have survived difficult situations.

I think because we can see the Spirit

that still lives even though their vessels are broken.

Even though they may not be Christian,

we can see God’s Spirit working though them.

In the book we’re reading for our Adult Study

about the Holy Spirit, it says,

“Through the Spirit, we are transformed,

regardless of who we are or what our circumstances in life might be.
We discover that faith is about living with a freedom, a joy

and a peace that the circumstances in our life cannot affect.”

It’s not that circumstances don’t affect us,

they do. They shape us, change us, influence us,

they direct us and move us.

It’s not that we don’t cry, mourn,

and have terrible days and nights.

I’m sure all of these people we admire

went through their own dark places.

But the Spirit does not let those circumstances defeat us,

our inner joy, freedom, and peace

that is given us by God.

Because our hope is not found

in the temporary clay pots that contain us,

Our hope is found in something bigger than us,

stronger than us, more giving and merciful than us.

Our hope is found in the eternal.

Our hope is found in God.

As Paul writes in 2^nd Corinthians,

Even though our outer nature is wasting away,

our inner nature is being renewed day by day.

We do not trust the outward evidence that we see,

but the Spirit of God that lives in us.

Kintsugi is the Japanese 

art of fixing broken pottery

with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. 

As a philosophy it treats 

breakage and repair

as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.

If you are living, or have lived, with a struggle, a pain, a loss,

if your life is difficult and complicated,

as most of us are. 

If your body is not what it was,

or it seems to be rebelling against you.

Remember that those breaks and scratches

are not ugly faults to be hidden.
They are your history, they shape you

and make you more interesting.

And most importantly,

they are a testament to the Spirit of God

that lives in you and has kept you going.

We do not trust the evidence that the world trusts.

We trust the Spirit of God that is alive in us.

The Trinity For Us

May 31, 2105

Holy Trinity Sunday

John 3:1-17

I think Holy Trinity Sunday is the only

church day that celebrates a doctrine.

And that doctrine is the doctrine of the Trinity,

that God is one and is also three,

Father, and Holy, Spirit.

Many a pastor and teacher has spent this Sunday morning

trying to explain this mystery using apples, or ice and water,

but I’ve found any explanation kind of leaves us scratching our heads.

And some of you who have been going to church a long time

may remember reciting the Athanasius Creed

it’s one of the three creeds that we adhere to in the

Lutheran church, but we don’t say it as much as the other two.

If you don’t know it, it’s kind of long and repetitive

and doesn’t really skip of the tongue like the others.

The people who made the new hymnal didn’t even

put it in there this time, which was probably a good choice.

The one time I remember reciting it

at my home church, and it was so long and confusing

that we all messed up and the pastor

had to stop us and start us together,

“all together from

‘And yet there are not three eternal beings…”

The Athanasius creed and the other creeds we use

are from the third and fourth century.

The Athanasius creed explains how

God and Jesus and the Spirit are one,

but they are distinct and each part

always was and always will be.

This was a time in the church when having the right

understanding about the nature of God and Jesus

was very important to Christians,

it basically decided your faith.

And the Athanasius creed does start with the lines:

“Whoever desires to be saved

should above all hold to the catholic faith.

Anyone who does not keep

it whole and unbroken will doubtless perish eternally.”

Which is why I won’t ever have us read this in our worship.

Thankfully we’ve moved to another place today.

Where adhering to whole and unbroken doctrine,

is not as important as trust in God

and questioning and understanding.

But all in all, I’m glad that this doctrine of the Trinity

has been handed to us, and was defended so strongly

and is part of our faith,

because it tells us something very important

about the nature of God and who God is for us.

First we have God the creator, the

all powerful and vast director of everything.

In the first reading today, we heard

Isaiah’s description of God.

God so enormous and unimaginable,

that the hem of God’s robe fills the whole temple.

God is beyond our seeing and our understanding.

The almighty creator of the universe

Who controls the seas and the mountains,

who set the planets and stars in motion.

Wholly other and beyond us.

And then we have God who is Jesus, a real person

who could hold a conversation with Nicodemus

a living, breathing, suffering person.

Who stood up to authority and cared for the weak.

Who felt the  loneliness, sadness, joy, and sweetness of life.

who knew the desperation and brutality of this world

and also the wonders it held.

God, a real person who you could touch

and smell, and hear.

He is one in the same as God the Father,

if you want to know the mind and heart of God the creator

then just pay attention to God the redeemer in Jesus.

And we have God the Spirit who

is so close to us, she seems to be a part of us.

Jesus says “we are born of the Spirit and we are Spirit.”

Paul tells us that the Spirit gives us the words to pray.

We know and are a part of

God the Spirit that challenges us and comforts us

that lives in us and moves through us.

That the Sprit groans in us, and makes us long for home.

And the Holy Spirit is God too.

God: creator, incarnate, and breath of life.

The doctrine of the trinity tells us that we have a God

who is all powerful, who is human, and who is part of us.

All together at the same time.

A God who is vast and unknowable,

and yet can touch us and move in us.

St. Augustine, another third century

church father, described the Trinity like this:

“Now, love is of someone who loves,

and something is loved with love.

So then there are three:

the lover, the beloved, and the love.”

And as Jesus tells Nicodemus,

this three is brought to us by the power of love.

God so loved the world that God

uses every way to reach us and be with us.

God, in God’s self, is a relationship.

A table for three.

Not two, so you might feel strange joining in.

But a table for three. The beginning of a party.

At a table for three, there’s always room for one more.

There’s always room for us.

We are always welcomed to that table.

This three in one God is the soul

that brings us together

that eternal thread that keep us connected beyond

physical separation and even death.

Each part dependant on the other.

Each one existing for the other,

God’s identity is defined in its relationships.

This trinity is a relationship of love.

God the Relationship

is the foundation of the universe

it is the heartbeat of all creation.

As it says in the Athanasius creed:

We worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity,
    neither blending their persons
    nor dividing their essence.
        For the person of the Father is a distinct person,
        the person of the Son is another,
        and that of the Holy Spirit still another.
        But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one,
        their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.

Everything begins and ends in this relationship that is God.

All creation is part of this dance.

We are all part of it:

each one distinct and different,

and at the same time one.