Other Symbols of Smallness: The Small Choir

This week's Gospel reading revolves around small things (mustard seeds and yeast) and hidden things (treasure and pearls of rare price and fish that are worthy hidden around a net full of sea creatures).  I have preached on mustard seeds and weeds before.  I'm always on the lookout for new metaphors and symbols.  I've used symbols like mold in a bathroom as a synonym for yeast. 

This year, I thought of an experience during Music Week, where we went to a workshop for people who are in charge or are part of small choirs.  It quickly became clear that we (me, my spouse, my S. Florida church friend) have a very different definition of  "small":  one of the workshop leaders talked about his small Vespers choir, and then casually mentioned the 70 members of the small Vespers choir.

We looked at music that three workshop leaders would be good for "small" choirs.  Almost all of them relied on choirs that had sopranos, altos, and deeper voices of some variety.  Many of the pieces rely on some level of musical skill from those voices.

I am guessing that most truly small choirs don't even have these resources.  Here's how I put it in the rough draft of my sermon for Sunday:  

"My version of a small choir is the type you’d find at a church that only has 70 or so people, a choir of six or seven where one or two people might be able to carry a tune and play an instrument, where the other five choir members have enthusiasm but no ability to carry the non-soprano sections by themselves, the kind of choir where getting everyone to sing the melody is accomplishment enough."

Seed Lottery: the Youth Sermon for Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23

Sunday's Gospel reading was Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23, the sower throwing seeds in every sort of landscape.  It's a reading that always takes me back to Godspell and the ways the wacky clown disciples acted out the parable.  

With a different set of kids, I might have suggested some improv instead of a youth sermon.  But the youth of Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee are not drama club kids, and I didn't want to put them on the spot like that.  So I created something different.

I usually invite the youth to come forward for the youth sermon, while the congregation sings.  Yesterday I invited them up to play "Seed Lottery."

I had created slips of cardstock, and on each slip, I wrote one of the types of ground:  "rocky ground," "a path where people walk," "a thorn patch," "a place with no sun,"  "ground with no rain," "ground where birds live," and "good soil with enough water and sun."  I had each youth draw a slip of cardstock, and then said we'd see which seed won the seed lottery.

They pointed to the one who drew that last slip.  I talked a bit about how the other growing spots might not be as bad as we think:  a bird can eat a seed and give it a chance to grow in a different place, complete with a bit of fertilizer (did every youth understand I was talking about poop?  who knows).

And then I concluded with the important piece:  God isn't running a seed lottery, with one clear winner and everyone else with lesser options.  God can take all sorts of situations, like rocky ground or thorns, and turn them into something good, something beyond our imagining.  

I was pleased with how it turned out.  My youth sermons are often just me chatting; I like mixing it up by doing something different.  Not every Gospel lends itself to something different, so I'm happy when they do--and happy when I can figure out a different approach while there is still time to do it.

Recording of Yesterday's Sermon

Yesterday was a good day at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee.  The heavy rains hadn't arrived yet, but it had been a cooler week, so we weren't all worn out from the heat and the 4th of July.  I had a great week at Lutheridge for Music Week, and my parents joined us at Faith on their circuitous way back to Williamsburg.  My mom's cousin Ruth joined us too.

I tried to do something a bit different with the passage from Matthew that talks about seeds and a sower.  I even brought in the Apostle  Paul, who by certain metrics would be a failure--of all the churches he founded, not one still exists.

I described the sermon this way:  "Perhaps you need a Sunday sermon that tells you that seeds get more than one chance in God's garden, that God, our exuberant sower of seeds, has great plans for us, that even people like the Apostle Paul could be considered a failure when considering certain metrics, and thus, there's hope for us."

You can view the sermon here on my YouTube channel.  If you'd like to read along, the sermon manuscript is in yesterday's blog post.

Sermon for Sunday, July 12, 2026

July 12, 2026

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23



This parable is strange, but not in the traditional way that parables are strange. What’s highly unusual is the last part of today’s reading, when Jesus starts explaining the parable in verse 18 instead of leaving our understanding to chance. You might be surprised and say, “Finally! Jesus here is more like Paul, telling us what he’s trying to say and how to apply what he’s saying!”


Because it is so very unlike the way Jesus usually uses parables, some scholars think it’s not Jesus at all. In fact, this is the only parable where he gives this tidy explanation. Maybe it’s the only time he channeled his inner Paul-like teaching self in all of the years of his ministry, but it’s far more likely that the explanation was inserted later. We always want to keep in mind that the Gospels were written long after the death of Jesus, and it’s not like the disciples carried a tape recorder with them or even made written notes about what Jesus said.


Do we like the tidy explanation? Does it yield any surprises? Would it matter if it wasn’t said by Jesus?


According to this tidy explanation, the seed is the Good News that Jesus brings us, and the various types of ground represent humans. On the surface, the metaphors work well enough. But they’re much too simple to tell us about the fullness of a human spiritual life.


We hear about these seeds, and we want to be part of that last group, with those phenomenal crop yields. Our modern minds aren’t likely familiar enough with ancient harvesting statistics to comprehend how big these yields really are. I found some information about yields in a Gospel commentary. A 7 fold yield is good; 10 fold would be true abundance. A 30 fold yield feeds a village for a year. But Jesus talks about a 60 fold yield or a 100 fold yield. Wow. Imagine planting 1 acre of beans and getting 100 acres of return on beans. I wish I liked beans. Let’s use a non-agricultural metaphor. Imagine making 1 cheesecake for your family for dessert, and you had enough for everyone in the tri-county area.


Those of us who are overachievers may hear this passage and feel we need to get to work on our spiritual practices so that we can be part of the 100 fold yield. But remember that Jesus didn’t come to bring us a cosmic self-improvement plan, although many people do respond this way to the Bible. But really, one of the most important reasons why Jesus came was to reveal God to us.


So, how is God revealed in this parable?


I think about the sower who is sowing those good seeds everywhere—and most of them are places where seeds aren’t likely to grow. Even in ancient times a sower would know not to throw seeds in those places. But our generous God is not a sensible sower. Our God goes places that a sensible sower would leave alone.


Think of our own lives in landscape terms. Even if we’re in a high-yield field right now, we’ve likely had times when we felt strangled by thorns. It’s not unusual to be pecked to the point of injury by the birds that are the people and institutions in charge of lives and livelihoods. We might have had good times where we felt like all was going right in our spiritual lives, only to be scorched when some colossal bad news came our way. How does this parable speak to us?


In the kind of garden where we plant each year and plow it all under at the end of the growing season, this parable would mean that we had only one chance. If we’re not high yield followers now, well, tough luck. If it’s a year without rain or a year of heavy storms, too bad. If we’re strangled by thorns or destroyed by birds, well, maybe someone else will get to be a high yield Christian.


But I am here to encourage us to think of ourselves not as the kind of plant that has only one chance to flourish, but as believers who are more like the volunteer tomato plant that grows by the mailbox year after year. Or better yet, believers as blackberry brambles. I am thinking of the blackberry vines that grow in various spots along the Lutheridge roads where I walk each summer morning. The blackberries are growing exuberantly this year, and I’ve heard something similar from those who have blueberries and elderberries.


If you haven’t tracked blackberry growth, you might shrug and say, “Well, yeah, that’s what berry plants do.” And maybe, left on their own, that might be true. But I’ve watched these brambles for almost half a decade now, and there have been times when I never expected to see another berry. The summer before Hurricane Helene, Duke Power came through to install new power poles. They bushwacked all the way up the hill, taking out every single berry with them. They also took out every thorny branch, leaving the ground bare and muddy, and I assumed the berries were gone forever.


Then Hurricane Helene came through, and surveying the wreckage, I assumed nothing would grow ever again—such is the nature of despair. But last summer, which was the first growing season after Helene, I noticed some berries peeking out from the downed trees—but only in one spot.


This year, I’m seeing berries in the usual places—but also in new places. Did I never notice them before? It’s more likely that a blackberry seed traveled, either by storm or by bird. And suddenly, there are blackberries where there were none before.


Now think back to the metaphors as the end of the Gospel explains them. If we think about the landing places for seeds, what we are given as explanation doesn’t leave room for second chances or any other kind of grace. But we know that seeds can sprout in the most unlikely places, poking their way through concrete or surviving digestive systems of birds or others and finding themselves in a new spot, giving extravagant blackberry harvests.


I think of Paul and wonder if he would be astonished at the unlikely harvest his work created. He would certainly be surprised that his letters survived and became the foundational documents of Christian faith. He was writing letters to specific churches with specific problems. He thought that the final judgment was underway, so he was trying to make sure his congregations were ready when God came back to judge the living and the dead, which he expected to happen in his lifetime.


We can’t go and see any of those churches today. If you take a tour of Greece, or anywhere else that Paul traveled, you can’t go worship in the spaces that Paul founded to see how they responded to Paul’s letters. You won’t find congregations that have been worshipping there for over two thousand years or families who have worshipped for so many generations that they have their own endowed pew. We might be tempted to say that the seeds that Paul sowed fell on rocky soil.


And yet, that would not be true. Here we are, reading the Gospels and Paul’s letters and trying to discern the best way to be sowers for the Kingdom of God. Here we are, 5,470 miles away from Paul’s mission field, thousands of years later.


Today’s Gospel is full of grace—particularly if we drop the explanation. There’s more than one way to sow a seed and more than one harvest that might be produced. What one generation determines to be a low yielding crop might actually produce 100 fold when we look back across time and space. Soil that’s difficult for one crop might be fertile for others.


Happily, God’s abundance means a wide variety of chances: chances for us as seeds, chances for us as soil, chances for the Kingdom of God to come near to us, whether we’re trapped in stony paths or wrapped in thorny brambles or ready to flourish in well fertilized soil. The word of God will germinate in ways that will surprise and delight us, and ways that will change across one person’s lifespan and across all of human history. Seeds can find a way to sprout in and through concrete; the word of God is even more resilient and determined to find a way to grow in each and every one of us.

Saturday Snippets: the Prodigal Samaritan and Other Meanderings

Here we are, practically at mid-July.  Let me capture a few snippets that I want to be sure to remember:

--Last night, we had some folks over for dinner, some Music Week friends and family.  I offered invitations on Thursday, and the ability to be spontaneous made me happy.  I was also happy that my spouse was able and willing to take care of the important details, like buying the grillables, while I was at work.

--My spouse bought pork chops and country ribs because they were on sale.  Happily, all our friends and family eat pork.  But even if they didn't, we'd have had enough.  I finally made squash casserole, and we had watermelon too.  We had a pan of roasted potato pieces and a big salad.  One friend brought a bowl of peach chunks, which went so beautifully with pork and also worked for dessert with the chocolate chip oatmeal cookies I made earlier in the week.  

--We had seven people around the dinner table, which is about all we can fit comfortably.  It's a small table for our small space.  I'm glad we were able to make it work.  I'm grateful for friends who understand the challenges of a small space.

--I'm also grateful for a dishwasher, which made clean up so much easier.

--One early morning over oatmeal, I was talking about my dream coffee maker.  It would have several parts.  One would be a single serving, pod-like, machine.  One would be a traditional 10 cup coffee brewing contraption.  It would also make espresso and steam/froth milk (and the steamer needs to be detachable and dishwasher safe).

--Of course, such a machine would take up too much valuable counter-top real estate, even if I could bring myself to afford what a company would charge for such a contraption.  But it is the one counter-top appliance that I use every day.

--This morning I'm finishing my sermon on the Good Samaritan.  Earlier this week I said I was writing a sermon on the Prodigal Samaritan, and I have mused about what that parable might be.

--I have a lot to say about the Good Samaritan.  It's rare to have a Gospel reading that could go in multiple directions.  I often feel like I can barely eke out one sermon.  I'm grateful that this sermon came together easily, because it's been a jam-packed week.

--It's been a wonderful week.  I am not sure I could keep going at this pace, but I'm glad to know that I can hang in there for at least one jam-packed week.

Marshmallows and the Parable of the Talents

Yesterday's Gospel was the Parable of the Talents in Matthew (Matthew 25: 14-30).  It's not the best parable for a children's sermon.  I've had more luck with parables about seeds or yeast.  My spouse came up with a good approach for yesterday's sermon.

It started with inspiration from a fellow seminarian who mentioned the experiment with marshmallows and children, which you may remember from Psychology or Early Childhood Ed classes.  Give a child a marshmallow, tell them that they will get another marshmallow if they don't eat it until a deadline in the future, and see who has impulse control.

We had a bag of marshmallows left over from last Sunday's Harvest Festival at the neighborhood lake, so we divided them into bags that held 1 marshmallow, 5 marshmallows, and 10 marshmallows.  I gave each child a bag with one marshmallow.  I told them that they could keep the one marshmallow--but what if they had a chance to win 5 additional marshmallows if they called a coin toss correctly?  If they knew they would chance losing the marshmallow, would they place the bet?  Would the chance to win 10 marshmallows make a difference?

I decided not to actually do the coin toss--gambling and church groups don't always go together.  I talked about the God of abundance who doesn't require us to give up our marshmallows but does encourage sharing.  And even though we might question the wisdom of sharing, because then we'd have even fewer marshmallows, God will multiply abundance in ways we can't even imagine.

It doesn't exactly fit the message of the parable--and I did try to make some connections to the parable--but I think it worked well as a children's sermon.

Foolish and Wise Virgins, Apples and Guests of Honor

Yesterday's lectionary gave us Matthew 25:  1-13, the parable of the foolish virgins and the wise virgins, the lamp oil and the late bridegroom (late as in not on time, not late as in dead).  I was not preaching the adult sermon yesterday--we had a pastor staff member visiting from the Southeastern Synod, and he took the adult sermon.

I wasn't sure how to approach the parable--I didn't want to discuss marriage customs in times of antiquity in a children's sermon.  I decided to talk about the strangeness of the parable, but to do it from a bit of an angle.  I gave each child an apple, a real apple, with the instructions not to eat it.

I said that we would each need to have an apple for a party that we were going to have, that the guest of honor wasn't here yet, and that the guest of honor would want us each to have an apple.  Now what happens if this half of the group eats their apples?  What should the people with apples do?

We talked about the possibilities, and we started with the most obvious:  the people with apples should share their apples.  Isn't that what Jesus has been telling us to do, week after week?  But that's not what this parable says.  

What are our other options?  The ones who ate their apples could go buy more apples.  And that's what the parable tells us happens.  And what's the risk?  That the guest of honor comes while they're gone--yup, that's what happens.  The door is locked, the party goes on inside, and the ones who ate their apples are out of luck.

It's a strange parable.  It seems so different from what Jesus preaches in other times, that there's enough, that God will give us what we need, that it's safe to share.  Jesus is telling us a different message, that we need to stay awake and alert, because we don't know what will be required.  We've got our apples, which can represent our spiritual strengths, and we should conserve them.

It's not a perfect approach to the parable, but I'm pleased with how it went.

A New Metaphor for Herds of Sheep and the One Who Goes to Fetch the Missing One

Yesterday I was part of a Bible study group that has members across the southeast U.S.  We're going to look at parables, a plan which has many benefits.  The readings are short, and for the leaders (I'm one of them), the prep time is minimal.  Of course, there's lots of resources if one wants them.  I used this Bible study as a reason to buy Amy-Jill Levine's Short Stories by Jesus.

That book begins with the parable of the lost sheep--or is it the one who owns the sheep who is lost?  We'll follow the path of the book for the next several meetings:  lost coins, the lost sons, and then yeast.  One thing that never struck me until I read the book:  a man who owns 100 sheep is rich.  A wealthy-ish peasant would own a sheep or two, not a hundred.

I also had never considered how difficult it would be to notice the disappearance of one sheep if you have a hundred sheep.  As we talked about this parable, we created a more modern version.

Most of us in the Bible study group work in the education field, and for some of them, this past week was their first week back.  She talked about the first recess time, when one grade group mingled with another grade group and some of the students who were supposed to go inside with their class stayed outside with a different class.  Because it was the first week and because there were so many students, it was hard to tell by sight who wasn't where they were supposed to be.

Happily it was easily sorted out, and this is where the updating of the parable falls apart.  In the parable, the sheep and the shepherd are in a wilderness area.  When the shepherd goes after one sheep, the remaining herd is in danger, as is the lost sheep.  In the schoolyard and school building, the children were safe.

It was interesting to have this discussion of parables, many of which are so familiar to us to have lost their strangeness.  I feel fortunate to have a group willing to dive in with me.

A Different Approach to Mary and Martha

Last night in my seminary class on Luke, we looked at the Mary and Martha story, the one where Martha says she needs help.  It was a revelatory session, so I wanted to record it so I would be sure to remember it.

First we read the text out loud, or, my professor did.  Here is Luke 9:  38-42 (NRSV, updated edition):

38 Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him.[k] 39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at Jesus’s[l] feet and listened to what he was saying. 40 But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her, then, to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, 42 but few things are needed—indeed only one.[m] Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

And what did we notice?  Martha doesn't specify what kind of help she wants and needs.  For centuries, we've assumed it's some kind of help in the kitchen; for centuries, that's the only kind of work women would be doing.  But that's not what the text says. We also see Mary as a passive figure, a very static part of the story.  She might as well be the lamppost for all that she does.

Another word about Mary's choice.  My professor disagrees with the word choice of better.  She likes a translation that says "Mary has chosen what is good."  It's not a competition.

It's interesting to consider this text in the context of what comes before and what comes after.  In Luke 9 and 10, we've had lots of action:  believers being sent out and coming back to report.  We know that some of these believers were female.

We also have the story of the Good Samaritan just before Mary and Martha, and the Lord's Prayer just after, which the disciples receive when they ask Jesus to teach them to pray.

My professor presented this argument:  perhaps we are seeing Martha's call story.  In Martha, we see the dangers of the Good Samaritan model of discipleship:  serving, and serving, and serving until there's nothing left to give.  And what replenishes?  Prayer.

My professor also suggested we read canonically.  What happens if we consider this passage next to John's text, where we see Mary and Martha and their dead brother.  Both characters are more fully formed and both engage Jesus.  In fact, Martha gives one of the most powerful testimonies to the identity of Jesus in the Gospel of John.

My teacher reminded us that there is some doubt that these are the same women (they now have a brother, and the houses are in substantially different locations), but if they are, they have grown spiritually.

It's an exegesis that makes me so sad to think of the ways we've wasted this story and reduced it to a morality tale that tells women not to fuss over the housework but to shut up and sit at the feet of learned men in our orbit.

The Good Samaritan and Self-Care

I read an interesting perspective on the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37) for this week's Pastoral Care and Counseling in Context class. In "The Self-Differentiated Samaritan," Jeanne Stevenson Moessner notes that the Good Samaritan knows how to practice care for others and self care at the same time, noting a crucial part of the narrative that often is not emphasized:

". . . the Samaritan finished his journey while meeting the need of a wounded and marginal person. . . . He relied in a sense on the communal, on a type of teamwork as represented by the inn and by the host at the inn." (p. 66)

 
The implications? "As pastoral counselors, pastors, laity, and seminarians, we must sometimes take the wounded to the inn. The inn may be a battered woman's shelter, a Resolve meeting, a Bosom Buddies' support group, a round of chemotherapy. The inn may be represented by other disciplines in healing, such as the behavioral sciences. The inn may be the church." (p. 67)

In other words, we can care for others without sacrificing our needs and wants--and we don't have to be the only one involved in the process of caring for others. The burden doesn't have to fall only on one person.

The essay is in Robert C. Dykstra's Images of Pastoral Care: Classic Readings.

A Manuscript of Sunrises

Last week, I got a note rejecting my poetry.  In some ways, that's nothing new, nothing unusual.  I get more rejections than acceptances.

But it was from my dream poetry press, the one I would choose if you said, "We can have any publisher produce your book of poems--just tell us which one."  Again, that's not unusual.  They've rejected me before.  But this time, they kept my manuscript much longer than the last times that I submitted to them.  In this way, I got my hopes up.

Come to find out, they kept my manuscript longer because they got more manuscripts than they usually do.  Sigh.

On the day that I got the notification of rejection, I went for a walk, as I usually do.  I go before sunrise, and I usually get to my little neighborhood lake in time to watch the sky turn colors as the sun rises.  It's usually glorious, and each morning is different in its glory.  Even an overcast sky turns interesting in the face of a sunrise.

I thought about God and sunrises.  If God assembled a manuscript of sunrises, what would be included?  If that manuscript was rejected, would God feel sad?  One thing is certain:  God would keep creating sunrises.

Since I've spent the last month sorting, sorting, sorting, I thought about God and rough drafts.  Does a sunrise have a rough draft?  Does God keep all the rough drafts, and later look through them, looking for inspiration for new sunrises?  Does God keep them thinking there might be a day to return to them and improve them?

I realize I may have pushed this metaphor too far, but it did make me happy to think of God creating sunrises, morning after morning, offering us something different each day.  And it made me feel better about my own rejections.

The Kingdom of God is Like a Quilt

Today I was reading Luke 13, in The Message translation.  I was struck by the opening of some of the parables/metaphors; in verse 18:  "How can I picture God's Kingdom for you?"  And then there's the story of the acorn that grows into a tree and after that, the woman baking bread.

This morning, I also thought of another metaphor that Jesus uses in many of his parables:  the Kingdom of God is like a feast.  Jesus also uses work metaphors, like workers in the field.  I wonder if modern readers hear that and think about backbreaking labor, not the abundance of a vineyard.

The other day as I was finishing Morning Watch, I made up my own metaphor:  the Kingdom of God is like a quilt group, where friends decide to get together to work on their quilting projects together.  They bring their favorite foods to share and they enjoy each other's company.  They have such a good time they decide to meet regularly.

I've continued to think about this metaphor.  Would I need to extend it to have the quilt group buy a big house together?

This morning as I read the parables about small things that grow big, I thought about the quilt as metaphor.  How can I explain God's Kingdom for you?  A woman has a bag of scraps that are too small to make into a shirt or a scarf, scraps left over from other projects, scraps from beloved items that have become frayed and worn.

She puts one piece of fabric next to another piece of fabric and delights in the way that they look together.  She chooses a third scrap and attaches it with neat stitches of sparkly thread.  She continues in this way until the collective can cover a bed.  

Christ as Vaccine

A year ago, I preached a sermon that pitched the idea of the kingdom of God (not just Heaven, but the whole idea of kingdom) as virus--you can read more in this blog post.  This week, as I've gotten my second vaccine shot and thought about these new vaccines, I've thought about Christ as a vaccine.

These new mRNA vaccines, the Moderna and Pfizer ones, are different from old vaccines.  The mRNA vaccines teach our cells how to deal with the virus.  In future years, they may be useful in the fight against some cancers.

As I've thought about the Trinity, I've thought about Christ as this same kind of mRNA vaccine.  I often say that Christ didn't come to earth to save us from our sins, not in the way that we've been taught.  Jesus didn't have to die on a cross because he knew that 2000 years from now, I'd be mean to my sister or have any other number of failings as a human.

Along with many theologians, I believe that Jesus came to show us how to be better humans.  He announces the inbreaking kingdom of God, right here, right now.   Whatever Jesus can do, we can do too.  I first encountered this idea in Madeleine L'Engle's book, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art: “God is always calling on us to do the impossible. It helps me to remember that anything Jesus did during his life here on earth is something we should be able to do, too” (page 19).

Jesus comes to show us how to deal with all the diseases that would take us away from God--and here I'm speaking metaphorically.  And for his efforts, the Roman empire, seeing him as existential threat, crucified him.

I realize that many of us may feel deeply uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus as vaccine--but Jesus was always teaching in parables that would make his listeners uncomfortable.  We're used to them, and thus, they've lost some of their power.

My poet brain is always on the lookout for new metaphors, for ways that we can see the Trinity in different ways, the spark that might make us comprehend a whole universe that we can't usually see.  Christ as vaccine--that works for me.

God as Rocket, God as Space Station

This morning, in the hour or two before sunrise, I knew that the skies would be active:  a meteor shower, the space station flying over, and the launch of the Space X rocket.  Periodically, I went outside and peered at the dark sky.  I had in mind a blog post that I would write about God as space station or God as Space X rocket.

I saw nothing out of the ordinary, and I'm not surprised.  I spend a lot of time in South Florida trying to see celestial events, and it's often too light polluted or too cloudy or raining.  But my metaphor can still work.

Most of us, when we're on the lookout for God, we're looking for something showy, something obvious:  fire in the shrubbery, descending tongues of flame, or ascending rockets.  Sometimes, as we know, God does function that way.  

But our sacred texts remind us that God is often not working in such a showy way.  God is often working almost imperceptibly in ways that most of us won't ever see--much like the space station moving overhead.

And sometimes, we're rewarded for our careful watch.  This morning, about a half hour after the rocket launch, I saw something streaming across the sky--quite a contrail and quite a quick pace. I know that the rocket will orbit the earth for 18ish hours before heading to the space station, so I'm wondering if that's what I saw.

But even if we can't see a thing, God is still there, a creative force in a vast cosmos.  Or maybe it's time for a different metaphor.  Tomorrow I'll write about Jesus as mRNA vaccine.

Pruning and Protecting

 Here we are at the first day of September.  Traditionally, September might be a month of change:  summer shifts into the school year, and we sense a change in the seasons.  But for 18 years, I've been on a different schedule, in a school that has an odd quarter system, down in South Florida where we are still months away from cooler weather.

It's still a fine time to think about a shift, a time to make new resolutions, a time to think about what's working and what still needs some attention.

This morning at the end of the morning watch broadcast that I do from my church's Facebook page, I invited us to think about God as a gardener, pruning away the dead branches and protecting the new growth.  Unlike some of the language of parables, I don't like the idea of our lives being dead trees that need to be thrown into the fire.

I prefer to use the idea of pruning as a way of thinking about our lives.  What needs to be pruned away?  What needs to be protected?  What fertilizer do we need?  How can we get enough water for that which wants to sprout in us?

Yesterday's Sermon: Visions and Revisions

Yesterday, I wrote this blog post about the sermon I planned to deliver.  I planned to briefly talk about Thomas and his doubt and then shift to Jesus breathing on the disciples.  Then I planned to shift to modern takes on parables--the community (Kingdom) of God is like a virus.

I did worry about how the idea would come across to parishioners, but I was prepared to run with it.  But when we got to church, I got the idea for a different end to the sermon.  I ended up talking about not 1 metaphor for the community of God, but 2.

I learned that the choir would be singing "The Old Rugged Cross" after my sermon, and I was thinking about ruggedness.  And then, it came to me:  the community of God is like the Internet.  I thought about the article in The Washington Post that I had read about how the original folks who created the Internet had planned for it to work precisely the way that it does.  One part of it can go down, but the other parts will fill in the gaps. 

The Internet is designed to work if there should be a limited nuclear war--not Armageddon, like The Day After or those other 80's films, but something that takes out part of the network, but not the whole thing.  Information packets get delivered by way of the nodes that make the most sense.  It's a very durable system--much like the Kingdom/community of God.

I was much more pleased with this ending.  I hope that in the coming weeks, when people hear news of the virus or when people hear about all the ways we're living online now, I hope that they'll think of the Kingdom/community of God and make interesting new connections. 

I hope that we'll be enriched in this way.

For those of you wishing you could hear the sermon--or watch the whole service, you can still see it here on Facebook.  If you only want to hear the sermon, at minute 15ish, I come up to read the gospel, and the sermon is after that.

Corona Virus Kingdom of God

A few days ago, my pastor asked if I wanted to preach the sermon today.  I said sure.  He'll do the rest of the liturgy, the skeleton crew of a choir will sing, and I will preach.

The easy route would be to talk about Doubting Thomas, to be smug about how we didn't see Christ in person, but we believe, and we're so much better than Thomas.  I will not be taking that route.

What leapt out at me as I read it was verse 22, where Jesus breathes on the disciples.  How will we react to the lack of social distancing?

I've decided to create a parable; if Jesus walked among us right now, Jesus would use the virus as a teaching moment, a symbol.  I want to talk about the Kingdom of God as a virus.

Many of us will react the way that Jesus' contemporaries reacted to Jesus saying that believers are like yeast.  Today we love yeasted bread.  In fact, many of us are exploring the possibilities of yeasted bread in ways we haven't done since the 70's.  But to Jesus' contemporaries, they would see yeast as something wild, an outside influence, that contaminates the dough.

How might Jesus use the idea of a virus to teach us about God?  How can we be like a virus?

Many of the parables of Jesus start in a place of smallness.  Think of the mustard seed, or any seed--the tiny thing that grows at first with no one noticing, and then it becomes a huge tree.

When I first went to the Johns Hopkins website that tracks COVID-19 cases, there were just over 6,000 cases in the U.S.  This morning, there are 733, 287 cases.  Imagine what the world would look like if, instead of spreading sickness, the ethics of Jesus were sweeping across the planet.  Imagine how our world would be different.

The last few months have taught us a math lesson that some of us never learned.  We've seen the power of exponential growth.  But we've also learned a lesson about the power of personal contact.

The virus can't spread on its own.  It depends on human contact, on close proximity.  Likewise, the Kingdom of God depends on us to spread it.  And it's not necessarily just by words.  Like a sick person can spread the virus even before there are symptoms, we can spread the Good News that Jesus gives us just by living our lives according to those principals.

But just like a virus can be stopped, the Good News of God's Kingdom can be stopped too.  Some times, it's the actions of those who proclaim, when the behavior doesn't match the values professed.  Some times, the attractions of non-Kingdom life win our attention.  Some years, we're too steeped in grief, loss, and hard times for the Kingdom to bloom fully.

Let us return to the Easter message.  Let us remember that death doesn't have the final answer.  We'll learn a way to vanquish this virus.  But unlike the virus, the Kingdom of God expands, often in ways we don't see or don't understand when we do see them.  In this way, we're like Thomas with all his doubts.

But Thomas gets a second chance when he thrusts his hands into the wounds of Jesus.  God comes to be with us, in all of our human messiness.  We, too, get second and third and fourth chances, as many as we need.

Again and again, the Kingdom of God commits to resurrection.  We're invited to do that too.

Parables from the Pumpkin Patch

I have often wondered about the parables of Jesus.  Most of us church going folk have heard them so often that they've lost their power to shock or surprise.  Most of us forget (or have never been taught) how shockingly bizarre they would have seemed when people first heard them.

As we were offloading pumpkins, I thought about what insight the pumpkins, the patch, and our work together might offer us.  Let me play.

The Kingdom of God is like a patch of pumpkins that have been separated from the true vine.  But as they gather together, they can remember what life was like before the separation.  They can act as if they are still connected to the life giving vine and the earth--and in doing so, they will eventually find the true vine again.

The Kingdom of God is like a patch of pumpkins.  They see themselves as vastly different one from another, and yet they are more alike than they know.

The Kingdom of God is like a patch of pumpkins:  some are big, some are small, some are deep orange, some are white, and some are shades in between.  God delights in this variety, and we should too.

What does the Kingdom of God look like?  A small church that comes together to take pumpkins off a truck.  Some of the members scramble on the truck to get the pumpkins from the back to the front.  Others walk slowly with pumpkins in their hands.  Those who can't walk create a line and hand pumpkins one to another.  Those who can't stand will help with sales.

The Kingdom of God is like a pumpkin.  It can be made into a sweet pie or a savory soup.  It binds disparate ingredients together into a whole.  It grows slowly but surely, in environments that would kill less sturdy plants--and thus, a patch of pumpkins can sustain a tribe in a harsh climate.

The Kingdom of God can be used in many ways:  the purely decorative gourd or ingested from the skin to the seeds.  The Kingdom of God can provide the nutrients and fiber to keep our bodies full.  The Kingdom of God can soothe our aesthetic yearnings.  The Kingdom of God nourishes us in ways we didn't know we needed.

At a Lenten Journaling Workshop: Midway Through

A week ago, I was out of town, so our church's Lenten Journaling Workshop didn't meet.  Last night, we met again and did some thinking about parables--although we might not have always known we were thinking about parables!

First, I handed out 4 slips of paper in different colors. Each person had all four colors. On the green slip, we wrote a natural object. On the lavender sheet, we wrote an action or a verb. On the ivory sheet, we wrote a tool. On the salmon colored slip, we wrote an arts and crafts supply or medium.

Then we pulled slips of paper out of a box. We ended up with these words:

sunset
throw
pen
watercolor painting

We wrote/sketched/pondered for 10 minutes with the prompt to write and to use these words as we thought about what God is like.

Then I read Matthew 13: 24-35, which contains two parables where Jesus tries to explain what the kingdom of God/heaven is like. We talked about how the word "kingdom" might mean something different than "heaven," which is a common translation. What might it mean? Perhaps the world as God conceives it.

We then pulled all the slips out of the box:

Ivory:
drill
drill
pen


Green:
pine tree
river reeds
sunset


lavender:
throw
sharing
dance


salmon:
watercolor painting
embroidery thread
brushes


We then took another 10 minutes to write/draw/respond to create parables of our own. The last thing we did was to try transforming our ideas into haiku. You may or may not remember that haiku is a 3 line structure. The first line has 5 syllables, the second has 12 syllables, and the 3rd line has 5 syllables. Haiku specialists would want me to tell you that there's much more to haiku than the structure, so now I have.

We took some time at the end to read what we wrote, if we wanted, or to discuss our approach.

We talked about why Jesus would teach in parables. I think it's to shock us out of our complacency--Jesus uses some bizarre comparisons to explain God. For example, yeast would be seen as something that pollutes perfectly good bread dough. It would be as if I said, "The Kingdom of God is like mold that takes over your bathroom when you're away on vacation and the AC stops working."

We talked about haiku and the value of condensing ideas into just a few syllables. And then it was time to go.

Sermon Notes: Bigger Barns and Gratitude

Yesterday at church, we had one worship service followed by a funeral service for a choir member who died unexpectedly 2 weeks ago in a car accident.  A week ago, my pastor asked if I wanted to preach the sermon for the worship service.  I'm almost always interested in doing that, so I said yes.

I had chosen the passage for today.  My pastor envisioned the month of November as a month of preaching about gratitude.  When he wrote to me in October to ask what my favorite Bible passages about gratitude were, I could only come up with pop culture stuff.  I suggested the parable of the man who was so prosperous that he had to build extra barns (Luke 12:13-34).

I suggested that one because it was one of the texts that we used during the Lutheridge retreat about simplifying, so it was in my brain.  I had been thinking about how much stuff I had brought with me to a retreat on simplifying.  I was thinking about my younger self, who just needed the right music on a cassette tape for a road trip.  I have often traveled with just a credit card and a lipstick in my pocket.  I am no longer that woman.

I know that the tie to gratitude isn't immediately apparent in the parable with the man who built the bigger barns only to die the night that it's all done, and he plans to spend time relaxing and enjoying it all.  It works much more obviously for a stewardship Sunday, where we're reminded of how important it is to share.

I took a different approach.  I talked about how many of us have too much stuff.  I talked about all of the books who give us various approaches to getting rid of stuff.  But what do we do when we've gotten rid of all the stuff that doesn't spark joy, and we've still got too much stuff?

It's an interesting needle to thread with this group at church, because I'm not sure we all have too much stuff.  In fact, I know that some of our members have a struggle making ends meet.

In the end, I tied all the discussion of our stuff to gratitude.  With all the time and energy and money that our stuff takes, we may feel resentment, not gratitude.  And we're likely not tending to what's important, our relationship with God and with the ones we love most.

Several people came up to me afterwards and told me how much the message of my sermon spoke to them.  I resisted the urge to quiz them--I'm always intensely interested to know what people actually heard.  Was it what I meant to say?

I do trust the Holy Spirit though, and so I resist the urge to ask further questions.  After all, we had a funeral in the offing--an undergirding of what I hoped would be the lesson of my sermon.