A Lession in Gardening Part 1

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
July 13th 2008
Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller
“A Lesson in Gardening Part 1”
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
As a child I remember helping my grandmother in the garden. If I am not careful I look back with rose colored glasses at the fresh vegetables, the time spent in the outdoors, and the delicious taste of food right out of the garden. The truth is that at the time I remember it as really hard work. It never seemed to end. There was always something that had to be done. If it wasn’t weeding, it was watering or even soil preparation. And, if I am really honest, I was not then much of a vegetable fan. But something must have stuck because despite the rabbits, squirrels, the Japanese beetles, the weeds, and even heat, I simply cannot imagine summer without a garden. In fact, that, ‘something’ is my belief that working in the garden is one of the best lessons in humility, patience, and hard work. On top of that, I now love vegetables strait out of the garden.
This morning’s lesson in gardening, provided by Jesus, actually begins inside the house. Our encounter with this gardening lesson is rooted in the preceding passage. In that passage Jesus invites his followers to participate in a new reality. It has many names. Some know it as the kingdom of God, or the Empire of God, and now, as Letty Russell has aptly shown; the household of God. I have come to believe that the term household best captures Jesus intent. In the previous passage he is sitting and teaching the disciples inside the house. Jesus is told that his family has come to see him. Instead of rushing out to see them Jesus says that his family, the household of God is not built on bloodlines, but in faithfulness to the ways of God.
In order to understand the radical nature of this teaching we need to look closely at the ancient household structure. The household in Jesus’ day looked little our modern western versions. Instead, it was a hierarchal system where the householder, most often a male, ruled over not only his immediate family but a group which would also include; trades people, merchants, slaves, and others who depended upon the goodness of the head of the household. This system of family was, in the words of the ancient chroniclers, the very foundation of the Roman Empire; ‘traditional Roman family values.’ Jesus’ parable about gardening then, is an exposition about the inherit risks and the abundant rewards of being part of the household of God.
This parable of farming or gardening shows the three greatest risks to the life of faith. This lesson is so important that Jesus explains what he actually meant, which happens infrequently. At the heart of the parable is the understanding that the life of faith, or life in the household of God is like soil. Each of the three risks is represented by a type of soil. While not all of us have experience in a garden, or with farming, this ancient parable is still instructive in our life of faith.
The first risk to long term growth is that the message will fall on hard, concrete-like, ground. In our life of faith, this hardened, near concrete soil, represents the places in our lives where we are captured by the messages of this age. As a result, the good news simply cannot be heard among all the other messages. Our senses have become so dulled, or numbed the message is lost. This is not meant to be deterministic, hard soil just needs extra work, but I will get to that in a few moments.
The second risk, of challenge is that the message will fall upon rocky soil. Now, this may not seem like such a big deal because grass and other weeds seem to grow quite nicely in the cracks in the sidewalk. However, how may gardens survive when there is little room for roots to grow? While they may sprout quickly there will be no long term growth. Jesus makes it clear that this risk in the life of faith has to do with developing deep roots in order to stay strong when struggles arise. Given that Jesus is talking about alternatives to the empire and to the ordering of households resistance and challenges must be expected. When we begin to turn from the ways of empire, the empire has a way of striking back. Without deep roots, the struggles and resistance of life will cause faith to wither. But the good news is that rocks can be removed from soil.
But of all the risks of faith the most insidious is the third. The thorns are the most unfortunate. They represent the cares of the world and the lure of wealth or better yet, the anxiety around financial security. A garden can have good soil, and strong plant life but thorny weeds really can choke out the growth of plants which have deep roots. While it is true that thorns can be removed, you run the risk of pulling out the plants you want to keep as well as even causing your hands to bleed.
This parable is probably not one which would recruit many folks to working in a garden. The statistics in this parable are not very encouraging. After all, three quarters of the work of the sower comes to nothing! But despite the challenges the good news is that one quarter that grows will be amazingly abundant.
As we look to this passage as instructive for our life I believe the most fruitful work can be found in soil preparation. Our work, or out calling in the life of faith is to work at preparing the soil of our life and of our community. Our job is not to identify who is the rocky soil, or who is affected by thorns, or who is growing among rocks. After all, if we are honest I believe we all have these places in our lives and in our community. Instead, the work of the disciples is soil preparation.
If you have never worked in a garden, soil preparation is the work that is not particularly exciting or glamorous. But without good soil preparation no growth will occur. That means, breaking up the soil, removing the stones, the thorns, and finally adding some compost. I really can think of no better metaphor for the life of discipleship because it takes time, there are no guarantees; it can be frustrating, and surprising. We never know exactly what will happen. All we can really do is to prepare the soil, remove the rocks, ad some compost to the soil, let the soil take a Sabbath from time to time, pray, rest, study the bible, begin to develop the ears to hear and eyes to see when it is time to act, when it is time to say no, when it is time to rest. To continue our work for justice and to continue to share, with joy, God’s welcome for all, we must attend to the garden of our lives and this community. So let us continue to work the soil of our lives. Amen.

A Sordid Reputation

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
July 6th 2008
Communion Meditation
Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller
“A Sordid Reputation”
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

“…to what shall I compare this generation…” These are not the sort of words that one wants tossed in their direction from Jesus. They are the words of a prophet. They are words of judgment. And those to whom Jesus is speaking about are the religious and political leaders of his day.
Jesus simply compares the elite of his day to children who pretend to be adults. These leaders who make decisions for the people, and who claim to speak for God, are acting like children. The term child is not meant as a term of endearment. Unlike times when Jesus talks about becoming like children to enter into the kingdom of heaven, here the term child is meant to be an insult. These adults, the leaders are self-serving, who have neglected their high calling to care for the widows, orphans and immigrants in the land. They have grown fat and sassy on the backs of the very people they claim to serve.
Jesus, and John the Baptist before him, have invited all people to turn from the ways of empire and to embrace a new way of life. As you might imagine this invitation has not been well received from those in positions of power. Jesus and John do not play by their rules. They do not dance when so ordered and they do not mourn because these children command it. Because Jesus and John refuse to dance for those in power, the elite have chosen the road of character assassination and guilt by association.
John was a righteous man, a man above reproach. He did not partake of wine or the trappings of high society. Instead, he traveled into the wilderness and called others to do the same. His was a way of life that called into question the lives of those who had become comfortable with the ways of empire. As a result it is reported that John has a demon. After all, anyone who would challenge the ways of empire would have to be demon possessed. However, character assassination does not affect this troublesome prophet, so John is finally executed.
Jesus too, faced similar troubles, except Jesus did not follow the same way as John. Instead of living in the wilderness and subsisting on a diet of locusts and honey, Jesus had a different plan. Jesus broke down barriers around table fellowship. Instead of following the customs and traditions of the day, he would sit down to dinner with anyone. As a result Jesus would sit with the leading Pharisees as well as with tax collectors and other sinners. Jesus broke these barriers all in an attempt to share with them the love of God. But this was unacceptable to those in power. As a result, Jesus willingness to share the love of God with all people became the very thing which was meant to defame his character.
Jesus seems to take all this defamation of character in stride with an odd appeal to wisdom. In order to better understand what Jesus is talking about in his reference to wisdom, and his prayer to God about hidden knowledge, we have to go back to the book of Proverbs. In the eighth and ninth chapter of Proverbs we find woman Wisdom, or Sophia in Greek. Sophia is the embodiment of God’s Wisdom which was present at the creation of the world. And what we learn is that Sophia reveals something about God to the world and is often rejected for doing her work.
It is clear that Jesus is wrapping himself in the Wisdom, or Sophia tradition. Jesus is the revelation of God and he is rejected by many. So we learn that Jesus is not only the embodiment of the Word but also the embodiment of Sophia or Wisdom. Following the ways of Wisdom does not offer the conventional trappings of success. Instead, the fruits of a life is an integrated life of authenticity, wholeness, and salvation. It is why Jesus makes a clear contrast between the Wisdom of God and the children of this age who neglect the ways of justice.
What began as a condemnation and a word of judgment does not end that way. The final words from Jesus are an invitation. “Come to me all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens.” They are words of compassion, and an offer of a transformed life. However, this invitation is not a call which will lead to a life of leisure. Instead, the invitation is to be set free from all the other burdens in our lives. Jesus says: ‘There is another way.’ It is the way of wisdom which calls us to live a life that matters, that is of consequence and that moves us out of our self-interest and opens us up to the concerns of others.
As we are moved, to think beyond ourselves, to reach out and share the good news and to live a life of consequence, let me leave us with a reminder of where this all began. Jesus had the reputation of a drunkard and a glutton. The one we call Lord and Savior at with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus did it all so that that the simple good news of God’s love for all people would be known. As a result, this whole scene should leave us all with a nagging question: “Are we willing to risk our hard earned reputation to share the love of God? Are we willing to be known as the followers of the one who was called a drunkard and a glutton, all for the love of God?” Amen.

This is Trouble

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
June 29th 2008

Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller
“This is Trouble”
Genesis 22:1-4
This story, often called the Sacrifice of Isaac, is about faith and trust and about how even that which is most precious to us can become a hindrance to faith. It is a story where Abraham is asked by God to sacrifice his beloved son. It is a story about how God tests the first family of our faith. And it is a story about trust in God’s provision for life. At least this is most all the books, commentaries, and papers I can find on this passage.
However, this passage also is a story about other and frankly more disturbing issues. It is a story of how a young boy becomes a pawn to test a parent’s faith. It is a story that looks to be about a God who demands child sacrifice for appeasement. It is a story that ends with Isaac and Abraham never speaking to one another again. And it is a story where God ceases to speak to Abraham. It is obviously a story with which we need to wrestle. And wrestle is what I did this week.
Months ago it seemed like a good idea to preach this passage; though this week I began to question that wisdom. To be faithful to our biblical text we have to tell both the uplifting and the disturbing parts of the story. At this moment, faced with the disturbing parts, I find myself wanting some explanation from God. I am left wondering: “God, what is it that we are supposed to do with the difficult and disturbing parts of this passage?” At the risk of overstating this, I have envisioned myself playing the role of Job asking for an audience with God and an explanation for those things which simply cannot be explained away.
On the one hand it is an appropriate metaphor in that we are seeking explanation for something that is troubling. But on the other it is not because we ourselves have not suffered this trouble. But it is worthy of our attention anyway. As I wrestled with my indignation of this passage I had an, ‘aha’ moment. It was a moment both rewarding and humbling. As I thought to myself, “how could anyone sacrifice their child to appease God?” It occurred to me, children are sacrificed for far less divine reasons all the time. We do not often think in these terms because too often we do not see the children being sacrificed as ours. So I took my anger of thinking: “How someone could sacrifice their children, and thought what if I considered all children as my own? Or all people as my own flesh and blood?”
I must admit it got me a little fired up as I began to consider some things. It was not pretty and, in fact, rather overwhelming. So as I share these examples of child sacrifice, hang in with me because I promise that there are things we can do. I thought first of the calls from politicians for sacrifice over the last 5 and half years. But most, in fact, all but one, of those politicians who called for the sacrifice of children made sure that their own children would never face danger. I am left to wonder: How different would the situation be today, if each person calling for the children of others to go off and fight a war, had to send their own children?
Or to bring things a bit closer to home: Saint Louis is home to some of the finest medical institutions in the Nation while right outside their doors, children go without insurance and asthma has become a rite of passage. And compound this problem with the issue of health disparity and you begin to understand why the infant mortality rate is two and half times higher in the African American community. This is an outrage.
And moving from health to education, we know that Saint Louis is also home to some of the finest academic institutions beginning with preschools all the way up to our world renowned Universities. Yet in the same town our public school system is no longer accredited, something is not right with this picture. While it is true that the law of the land is no longer “Separate but equal,” the practice of our land has clearly become savagely separate and unequal. How different might this situation be if we saw the children who are sacrificed on this altar of inequality as our children?
As Christians we should be outraged and appalled by these realities because whether we know them personally or not; they are our children, every last one of them. But the harsh reality is that we cannot do everything. There is too much to be done, but we can be part of taking a stand against sacrifice in any form. We can take a stand, we can say: ‘Those children, are our children and will not stand idly by as they are sacrificed.”
And where do these words get feet? In a small way I believe that through our outreach ministries we do have the opportunity to make a difference. You may not know it, but there are many opportunities to volunteer our time working with children, our children. Through our work with UCM (Union Communion Ministries) we could get our hands dirty in the community garden, or tutor at Clark elementary school, or we could volunteer our time with the summer bible camp, or help to create a safe environment at our Halloween safe night in the West End Community center, or even participate in providing Christmas for children who may not have one through the Breakfast with Santa program. These are just some of the ways in which we can put feet to our words.
I believe that there is no way to explain away the difficult places of this passage. Nor do I think it necessary. Instead we must take our discomfort with God’s request, a request God does not accept once offered, and use that discomfort to make change. Use the discomfort at the sacrifice of one child to ensure the end of all child sacrifice. Amen? Amen.

A Laughing Matter

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
June 15th 2008
Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller
“A Laughing Matter”
Genesis 18:1-15; Matthew 9:35-10:8
A few weeks ago I was talking to a pastor who was coming up on thirty-five years of service. He commented to me about how drastically his ministry has changed in the last ten or so years. “When I came out of seminary,” he said, “our job was to work really hard for three years learning the way to run the church. After that, you were supposed to repeat that until retirement. But now,” He continued, “things change so rapidly it is all I can do to keep up.” I did not hear his words as those belonging to someone longing for the ‘good old days.’ Instead it was an honest reflection about the nature of the work. I mentioned to him that in seminary it was almost nauseating how often I heard that our work would never be routine and that the church in North America was in for some radical changes.
But change is not just occurring in the church. In fact, it is almost cliché to say that the world is changing at a break neck pace. My generation, affectionately referred to as Generation X, was fed on a steady diet of things like: commercial television promising that happiness could be purchased for the low, low price of $19.95. We were also told we would change careers four times or more and have eight or more jobs in our life-time. We were also informed that social security is something we will only pay into and that we will not enjoy the same level of economic success as the previous generation, just to hit some of the happy highlights. As a result many of us simply expect to live in a world that is constantly changing. So, to hear that things will change is not really all that surprising, even if we wouldn’t mind if things stayed the same for at least a few weeks.
However, for those of us who have been fed a different diet, the break neck pace of life can leave us with our heads spinning. In response to these changes, for almost a generation, the church in North America has tried to become a haven from the changing world around us. However, this response is no longer a viable or, dare I say, no longer a faithful one. The good news is that we have a treasury from the great cloud of witnesses who point us in the direction of faithful responses to the changes swirling around us.
At eighty years old, Abram and Sarai receive the message that their well ordered world is going to change. No sitting around waiting to feed the worms. God says, get up, leave your family, leave your land and go because you are going to be a blessing to all the families of the world. And though it is not in the text you can almost hear them say: We have done our time why don’t you pick some young folk to do this work? In order to understand our passage from Genesis we have to keep this call story of Abram and Sarai in our minds. So that when we catch up with Abram and Sarai they have become Abraham and Sarah. Not knowing where they were going, they got up and followed God on a journey in the waning years of their lives, to be a blessing for the entire the world.
Sitting under the shade of the trees, in the heat of the day, Abraham sees three strangers in the distance. This was unusual since traveling in the heat of the day was dangerous. Abraham recognizes that these are no ordinary visitors. And, after leaving everything to follow God’s call, Abraham has become attune to the fact that God just might come in the most unexpected places.
So Abraham begs these strange visitors to stay and partake of their hospitality. After providing the finest provisions to these strangers they then make a ridiculous statement. “Sarah will have a son,” by next year at this time. While it is ridiculous, this is not the first time Abraham has heard this story. But the first time he did, he laughed at the ridiculous nature of the promise. But this time, here in the wilderness place, it is Sarah’s opportunity to laugh. So, it looks like Abraham kept this crazy promise from Sarah. Maybe he feared that if he shared this he would be laughed at and he could bear it. And laugh is exactly what Sarah does, at least in the privacy of the tent. After all, this is precisely the sort of news which we are all supposed to laugh because it is simply unbelievable. And, just so we do not forget the ridiculous nature of God’s promise, the child will be named Isaac, which means: He laughs. Isaac becomes a living testimony to the ridiculous ways of God.
Commenting on this passage, Old Testament professor Walter Brueggemann, says this passage points to one of those little embarrassing truths about our faith. He writes:
Faith is not a reasonable act which fits into the normal scheme of life and perception. The promise of the gospel is not a conventional piece of wisdom that is easily accommodated to everything else. Embrace of this radical gospel requires shattering and discontinuity.
Embedded in the stories of the first family of our faith is a reminder that God may call, and makes promises, but those promises never follow the path of comfort or routine. In other words, God says: I will be with you, you will be a blessing, but the rest well… that is another story.
And I am left thinking: Who is going to get excited about that? It’s ok to laugh out loud at this point, or maybe run for the exits. If you are like me, at this point I am looking to explain it all away by moving to Jesus. The hope being that we will find promises of good news that will provide some comfort and routine. Unfortunately, our faith in Jesus does not allow for such easy accommodation either.
When we turn to Matthew’s gospel, we come face to face with the calling and mission of the disciples. This comes as Jesus looks around to those in need and has compassion for the harassed and helpless. As a result, Jesus sends the twelve out to preach good news, teach about the alternative empire, and bring healing. And, just as they receive this calling, I like to imagine the disciples saying: ‘Why are you sending us to the harassed and helpless? Why can’t we have the job with the privileged and powerful? That would be a lot easier, or at least a bit more comfortable and predictable. On top of that Jesus, don’t you remember who you are talking to? We are a band of former revolutionaries, tax collectors, betrayers, and ultimately folks who are going to run from your side when things get tough. You should probably find some other folks to do this Jesus.’ And though it is not in the text I imagine that inside the disciples are laughing at the ridiculous calling from Jesus.
This is the God we serve. The God who calls, Abraham, Sarah, the disciples, even calls us to get up and go with ridiculous notions. God says: I do not care that you are too old, or too young. I do not care if you have betrayed me in the past or will do so in the future. Get up and go. My mission is in your hands. Your mission is not to create a haven of familiarity but to be a blessing to others, and to serve the harassed and helpless. Proclaim the God’s good news that even the ridiculous is possible. Get up, and go. And yes, God is speaking to each one of us here: Get up and go. And, it is even ok to laugh that God might even choose us to be the instruments of healing, and bearers of Good news. But, after we are done laughing, let us not forget to get up and go. Amen? Amen.