Be Seeing You

*This post was taken from my final Sunday sermon at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Asheboro, NC.

'Jesus put before the crowds another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind.' 

--Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-47

Good Shepherd, Asheboro

I wrote my first sermon in Asheboro at a desk built into the wall of a house on Middleton Circle in which I lived for just four months. I wrote my last sermon in Asheboro at the Black Powder Smokehouse, a barbecue place on Fayetteville Street that didn’t even exist when I first came here. In the eight years, two months, and one week between them, I’ve learned quite a bit, but one of the most significant is a lesson found right there in our Gospel this week: small things matter.

The first words out of Jesus’ mouth in the Gospels is that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near. If I asked you what is the Kingdom of Heaven I suspect most of you – most Christians, in general – would say that it’s the place we go when we die. Yet Jesus never talked about what happens when we die, instead he talked about the present reality, and in this case the reality of the Kingdom of Heaven being right here, right now, and at the same time still to come. It’s what we call an already-not yet. Jesus being in the world is evidence enough that the Kingdom is already here, and yet we also know that it is has not yet reached its fullest manifestation. And this Kingdom, according to Jesus, can be compared, not to something fancy or strong or clean. This Kingdom starts small and is unassuming, but with time, with patience, with love, it grows and grows. Small things matter.

Simple intentions, brief encounters at the right moment become, with time and care, the fruits of such a Kingdom. Jesus is a brilliant teacher because he uses metaphor and hyperbole and turns established ways of thinking on their heads – long before Rian Johnson did it to Star Wars or Zack Snyder to the DC Universe, Jesus of Nazareth was subverting expectations. 

A mustard seed isn’t the smallest seed on Earth, nor does it grow into a tree. It’s tiny, yes, but it becomes more of a shrub and not exactly pleasant to the eye. Yet it is from this tiny, unassuming seed, that the Kingdom can grow, and it is to this unattractive shrub – not the mighty oak of empire – that the people will flock.

Yeast takes a while to be leavened, but three measures of flour is a lot. It’s going to take that woman a good long while to knead it all. Sometimes the Kingdom, Jesus is saying, requires time and patience. The New Interpreter’s Bible offers a modern day analogy for this parable: the Kingdom of Heaven is like a preacher who has a congregation of 25 in a city of two million, and keeps preaching until everyone hears the Good News. 

A man buries something that he doesn’t even know is a treasure. It seems, at first, insignificant, but joy abounds when he realizes its worth, despite the fact that he did not even know that he wanted in the first place. So he digs it up and buries it again for the fun of finding it once more. How exciting the Kingdom must be, if it’s worth rediscovering over and over again!

A pearl so precious, so lovely, that someone would give away everything they had just to possess it. No material object could be that valuable, and no one would say that’s a sound financial decision. Except maybe Jesus.

A net is cast into the sea, and shimmering fish of all sorts get hauled in. Such is the Kingdom. Such is Jesus.

The smallest of seeds, the most hidden of treasures, and fish of every kind reveal God’s bounty. What a wealth of wonders the Kingdom is, and it’s all right here, in the smallest details. No, y’all, the devil isn’t in the details, Jesus is! Right there, hidden under our chins, so ordinary, so precious, and do you know what? – he keeps showing this Kingdom to us!

Pink bows that popped up all over town after the tragic death of our beloved Laura Lisk in 2016 led to a foundation set up in her name, to give opportunities to the very people whom she sought to love and serve in life. That’s a mustard seed growing into something mighty.

For folks to keep decrying sin of racism in our community and calling on those in authority to remove a monument that has too long been a symbol of hate, despite no actions from those authority figures and continued aggression from that symbol’s supporters, seems a daunting task. Why bother? Still, you show up, you stand in the legacy of Jesus and the prophets who cried out for shalom – peace - and hesed – justice - for everyone. That’s the woman taking all that time to knead the yeast until it is finally leavened. 

On Easter Sunday this year, the rain kept us from being outside, so our kids had to hide their own Easter eggs all over this building. They then ran all over the place, again, with so much excitement re-discovering where they had put them. That’s the treasure so amazing that the man hides it over and over again in order to keep finding it over and over again.

In the past few months, I have resumed visits to the local prison, where I have recently been seeing a man incarcerated for murder for 37 years. He has written to our church multiple times, even before I came back from medical leave, and though no one had visited him in almost two years before I took him Communion in June, he longs to find a church home that can forgive him and welcome him, or visit him in case he is never granted release. Like the one who will sell everything for the pearl so precious, this prisoner longs for just a little love that he knows is the sign of the Kingdom.

In June of last year Good Shepherd lived into its call to love and welcome all people in a way it never had before by publicly celebrating the Holy Eucharist in honor of Pride Month and proclaiming the imago dei – the image of God – in our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, and intersex siblings. That’s the net being cast that brings in fish of every kind. 

Small things matter. Little acts here and there build and build and grow and grow and before you know it, you’re smack dab in the middle of the Kingdom of Heaven. If you have eyes to see, behold the Kingdom is all around you! If you ears to hear, listen to sounds of the Kingdom – in the cries for justice, in the laughter of children, in the lonely groans of the shut-in. If you have hands that are open, receive the Kingdom – here and now at this Table and taste what Ignatius of Antioch called “the medicine of immortality!” in something as small as a cracker.

On this final Sunday of my tenure as Rector, Jackson Lafayette Hailey will finally get his cracker and so much more. He’ll be washed in the baptismal waters as Jesus was, made one with Jesus and with all of us, sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever. He’ll be given the promise of the forgiveness of sins – that whenever he makes a mistake, and he will, that he knows he can return to this place, to all of you, to our God, and be forgiven. What’s more, everyone here will be given a glimpse at the hope God gives us for the future. Nurture Jack, as you would nurture a seed, and help him along as the woman kneading the yeast, and remind him – and remind all of the kids in this place – that they are as valuable as that pearl, and that Jesus loves them like the man going after that treasure again and again, and that they have a place here.

With Jack Hailey, the newest member of the Body of Christ.

 I’m a priest because someone did all those things for me in a little Episcopal church in the coalfields. We didn’t have programs that I could get lost in, we just had a faithful community that knew that the Gospel, the Good News, of Jesus and his love, was enough to change the world for the better. I believe that and have lived my life – and by extension my priesthood – as if all of it were real – the love, the grace, the redemption, the resurrection. My great-grandfather used to say that the most over-used word in the English language was ‘awesome,’ because it was so misused. I truly believe to know the living God in Christ Jesus, made manifest in the Eucharist, and shared with the people of God in this hospital for sinners is the most awesome thing in the whole world. How then can I not share that? How can you? 

I may be leaving you, Good Shepherd, but the Church remains. I told our search committee eight years ago that we are all interims. At some point we all leave, even Joe Mitchell, even Jay Hobbs, Everett Thomas, and Barbara Cook. Church communities don’t live or die by their priests. It’s not about me. And it never was. It was, is, and always will be, about Jesus. I’m just one of those preachers who gets excited talking about him because I’ve known how he can change lives. I know the power of the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood to strengthen us as food and drink for our journey. I know that resurrection is real because I carry another person’s liver inside of my body thanks to God’s gift of medical science. And I know the depths of the love of God when I have seen the tears in the eyes of people told they were unlovable who realize, for the first time, that the song my beloved late mother sang to me is true that Jesus does love them. It’s real, this Jesus-thing we do. All of it. And it changes lives. If you have heard or believed nothing else in the last eight years, I pray you hear and believe that and hold on to that Gospel truth, no matter what changes may come.

You cannot stop the change anymore than you can stop the suns from setting. Shmi Skywalker said that when her boy went off to be a Jedi. The act of living is an embracement of change, according to Rioji Kaji. Other priests will occupy this pulpit. Listen to them. Ask them questions. Challenge them. Walk with them. Love them. And let them love you. As you do, remember that what starts small, God gives growth. What seems daunting, God fulfills through patience. What’s so precious, God puts right there in plain sight, which is that the Kingdom of Heaven is as close to you as your own human breath – ya…weh….the name of God, breathed by us countless times in a single day, and both the first and last sound we ever make. 

The Good News – the Gospel - of this Kingdom that is so very close is that captives are free, the poor have hope, the hungry are fed, the lowly are raised up, and that all of them, all of you, are loved by God beyond the capacity for rational human thought, based on nothing you’ve done or left undone, but only because of God’s grace. Receive that Good News for yourselves, and then give it away, and just see what happens. It’s a small Church – the Church with a big C - so I look forward to finding out what the Spirit has in store for you; after all, she rarely makes a mistake.

I leave you, instead of goodbye, with one more pop culture reference, the salutation used in one of my favorite and most influential television shows, The Prisoner:  Good Shepherd, Asheboro…be seeing you. 

Loving the Wheat, the Weeds, and Everything In-Between

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

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

--Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43

Twenty years ago, my best friend Richard and I built a fence around the house where I grew up in Flat Gap, VA. This wasn’t about maintaining a property line or keeping anybody out, but it was to hold back the woods that were slowly getting closer and closer to our house. He and I got to work, digging the post holes, mixing the quickcrete, and, of course, clearing out brush. But we didn’t use a weed-eater, oh no, not for this stuff. We used machetes! And let me tell you, we went to town on everything – briars, weeds, small intrusive trees, you name it. We got that fence built, but when it was over it wasn’t just the weeds and the briars and small intrusive trees that got slaughtered by those machetes. We’d cut into blackberry bushes and flowers and other innocent plants. Moral of the story: don’t go macheting nothing that don’t need macheting!

My best friend, Richard Mullins, and I in 2003, the summer we built a fence.

I can picture the servants in this parable Jesus tells wielding these machetes, ready to chop up whatever gets in their way, only they get stopped by their master before any damage can be done.

Jesus gives his first “the kingdom of heaven may be compared to…” parable here, immediately after telling the Parable of the Sower, which we heard last week. One way to translate that first line from Jesus might be to say, the way God acts, relates to, and affects God’s followers is like the following story. In this case, like a master who has sown good seed, only for it to be infiltrated with bad seeds and the two to grow together until the harvest comes. If you find this confusing, so did the disciples. Like last week’s parable, this one also gets an explanation from Jesus – and maybe he was ticked off by having to explain himself because he never explains another one! The one who sows, the master, is the Son of Man. The field is the world, good seed are children of the kingdom, bad seed are children of the so-called evil one, who sowed those seeds while no one was paying attention, and the reapers are the angels who will gather those folks together when the harvest comes, which is the end of the age – the eschaton. No explanation is given, though, for who those servants in the story are, but maybe they are the folks who are eager to play the role of the master and judge between what is wheat and what is weed.

An icon of the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds

Let’s go ahead and acknowledge that this is a tough parable to hear because it reeks of judgment. There’s a dualism here: you’re either wheat or weeds, and if you’re weeds then you’re going to be gathered up and burned in the place with weeping and gnashing of teeth. I want to apologize to anyone who had a preacher tell them that this dread, this fear of being a weed and getting thrown into the fire, was what should motivate their Christian lives.  That’s just not what Jesus is doing.

Yes, there is judgment here, but the judgment is a reflection of what was happening in the early church at the time, namely Matthew’s gospel community. Matthew is all about the eschaton, he loves him some apocalyptic imagery, and because this community was very mixed – with both Jews and Gentiles and with those who genuinely believed the Gospel liberation message and lived it out and those who only gave it lip service – there was a tendency for folks to separate themselves, go into their own silos, if you will. The writer of the Gospel didn’t like this and has Jesus offer this prophecy, that when the kingdom comes on earth in its fulfillment at the end of the age, those pseudo-disciples will get their comeuppance. Anytime you read these kinds of judgmental Gospel passages think about what was happening in those communities, and you can understand that isn’t so much Jesus who is passing judgment but the Gospel communities themselves.

But that doesn’t stop a lot of Christians from just passing judgment left and right. You’re a weed, you’re a weed, you’re cool, and you’re a weed! When all you have is a machete, everything looks like a weed. This parable gives us a Gospel truth that we all need to hear: it ain’t our job to get rid of the weeds!

There’s a few surprises in this parable. For starters, the master in the parable is the one who sows, even though the servants would’ve normally done that work. Also, the master knows that it was an enemy who sowed these weeds, which were likely darnel, which is a noxious weed that closely resembles wheat and is native to Palestine. You can’t tell the difference between them until maturity. But maybe most surprising of all is that when the servants are so eager to take their machetes to the darnel, the master says no, they may damage the wheat, and he has them allow the wheat and darnel to grow together until the harvest time. 

There’s no silos in this story. There’s no separation. There’s nothing anyone has to do except let nature takes its course and for the seeds to blossom into whatever they will be and to wait for the master to take care of the rest. That’s what grace is, y’all. It’s the freedom that God gives us to not have to do God’s job. Besides, when we try doing God’s job it usually ends up coming out poorly. 

My parish here in North Carolina is preparing for my imminent departure next week. If you are among those folks, you might feel, especially in the coming weeks and months, like you need to take out your machetes and start weeding, or at least pruning. You might think the clergy who will walk with you are just the best examples of the ripest wheat and you might think they’re the weediest weeds that ever weed. You may have already decided that some folks that the outgoing priest treated like wheat were really more like darnel than real wheat and you and your machete are gonna make sure they don’t contaminate this field. But that’s not anyone’s call to make because it’s not your field, it’s not the priest’s, it’s God’s. The master in the parable owns the field! He knows what’s growing in it, even when nobody else does. So if that’s the case, then there’s no need for the machetes. There’s no need for the weeding and the pruning and the judgment. Not in this little c church, not the big C Church, not in the whole field out there in which our master, our God, has planted every single one of us. And yes, some are good, some are bad, and most are a mixture of both, but passing judgment on who is which is reserved only for God and only at the end of the age. Those of us who spend our time fretting over that day or acting on God’s behalf to pass the judgment beforehand on others often miss the flowers and blackberry bushes and beautiful creation all around us as we’re chopping away. 

No time for folks running to their own silos. No time for judgment. No time for machetes. Now is the time to grow together. Now is the time to take root where God has planted you and to listen for whom the Spirit is calling to take up residence in this particular section of God’s ginormous field for the purpose of loving the wheat, weeds, and everything in-between. 

Caring for the Soil

 'Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”

“Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”'

Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23

Does anyone know what the opposite of a green thumb is? Because that’s what I have! I did do a little research and found that the opposite of green on the color wheel is magenta, so maybe I should say I have a magenta thumb. The point is I’m bad at sowing and farming and reaping and all that other stuff. My wife Kristen and I have joked that when the zombie apocalypse comes she’s going to have to use her bow and arrow to kill for our food because I’m sure not gonna be able to grow it!

For what it’s worth, I have given it a try. My dad used to keep a garden with his bike-riding buddy in the summertime, and he’d have me till it, dig up taters, throw down seeds, and the like. When I moved in to the house where I've lived for the past eight years, I tried planting some things in a raised bed along the side of the house. Kristen and I had just started dating, and she was excited to get her hands dirty and for us to be able to eat veggies from our own garden, and you know what, it worked! At first. There was corn and okra and green beans and tomatoes. And then, there wasn’t. The soil had no depth and wasn’t very good. Too much of that Carolina clay. So nearly everything died about as quickly as it sprang up. We did get a few green beans and a couple of maters before the end, though. In the years since we’ve tried but have never been able to get that side bed to grow anything – except some wildflowers that finally came in this year. I suspect the intercessions of my wildflower-picking mother had something to with that. It’s a good thing I’m a priest because I don’t think I could cut it in the farming business.

Ah, but you know who IS in the farming business? God. Corny as that might sound – see what I did there? – God’s always been about planting and sowing and reaping and feeding. That’s just who God is. 

Jesus understood this about the one whom he called Abba. This week's section of the Gospel of Matthew kicks off a series of parables from Jesus, those similes and metaphors uses to describe something about the nature of God and what he called the Kingdom of Heaven, which is nothing less than the reality of God’s compassion and mercy most fully present, even to the most closed-off human mind, even now. This first parable is often called the Parable of the Sower, though I think Farmer would do just as well. A farmer goes out to plant some seed, and all manner of results occur. The seeds go everywhere. Some get plucked up by animals, some get scorched, some flourish a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 

Did you catch that there is a whole section of our reading today that’s missing? Can you guess what happens in that section? The apostles ask Jesus why he speaks to the crowds in parables. He says it’s because the apostles have been given the secrets of the Kingdom, but regular folk haven’t, so he has to speak in parables to them, but of course, the apostles don’t get it, either, and Jesus has to explain the parable to them – this is the first of only two times in the Gospel that Jesus takes the time to explain his teaching. The seed is the word – lowercase ‘w’ in our text, but we could just as easily capitalize it. The message Jesus brings about the compassion and mercy of God. The people hearing this word are the soil, which sometimes is rocky, sometimes full of clay, sometimes healthy and hearty. Whatever becomes of those seeds depends on that soil and how much care goes into it. 

The Parable of the Sower by Rebecca Brogan of jtbarts.com 

The seeds God has thrown down upon this earth are numerous: seeds of new ideas and refreshed traditions, seeds of hope and forgiveness, common seeds and rare seeds, seeds of longing and contentment, of controversy and of change. Seeds scattered everywhere, within each of us. Which will take root and grow? Will the soil, will we, receive them? Will we do our part to care for them?

Each of us has a part to play in God’s seed-sowing, crop-growing business. Sometimes we are given a bag of seeds and sent out, like the apostles, to throw them down wherever we go – into our work places, into our homes, our churches – whether the soil is dried up or fertile. Other times we are handed a hoe and a spade, and maybe some New Skin for the inevitable blisters, and told to get to work breaking through that hard ground, digging those trenches, preparing the soil for seeds that we will never touch but that others one day will bring. 

Whether we are called to prepare or to plant, to work, or to study, or to pray, we can help nurture the kind of soil that will be a good home for the seeds that are the compassion and mercy of God made known to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can devote ourselves to dreaming deep and breaking open and making space within ourselves and our communities for the sprouting of the Good News that Jesus offers, that the Kingdom is closer than we can possibly imagine. We can each play a part even if we never see the results. 

And that, brothers and sisters, is what the Church – big ‘C’ and little ‘c’ alike – is really all about. My dad used to tell the high school basketball teams that he coached that unless you won a state championship, the last game you ever play is going to be a loss. And for us, unless we’re around at the Day of Resurrection, when Jesus does come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead, well then, we’re not likely to see the end results of whatever seeds we’ve planted in the soil that is our own contexts – be it in our current church community, current city, or wherever. Ministers come and go. Kids graduate. Longtime pillars of the community go on to glory. But the church remains. The ekklesia. The people of God. The soil. And the soil will always need tilling, watering, and all manner of care. 

Sometimes that old garden my dad and his buddy kept up yielded some really good corn and taters. Sometimes not so much. Sometimes when we offer a program or a worship service, it doesn’t yield the harvest we hoped. It’s easy to get discouraged. But God is still the one providing the rain and sunshine, even if we are the ones with the hoe and spade. When discussing this text in our Bible Study this week, one person noted that the yielded up hundred, sixty, and thirty fold seemed huge, and that they were lucky to even get five - they later came back and said that five was too much and that they were lucky to get one! That’s kind of the point of the parable. The amount isn’t what’s important because God is still moving in the hearts of those who receive those seeds, even if it doesn’t seem like much has been done. All you have to do is be faithful and trust. In the case of the Good Shepherd in Asheboro, the parish I've served for the past eight years and to whom I will be saying goodbye at the end of this month, even if the reputation they've garnered is that they're the church that offers an ice cream social to neighborhood kids in the summertime, or that they're the one church where literally all people are welcome, well, they've yielded a good harvest. 

We all have been given seeds for planting, even those of us with magenta thumbs. But those like us have still been given a spade and a hoe. So what do ya say? For the sake of the ones who’ll come after and reap the harvest, let’s get to work, wherever the seeds get thrown.