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Scattering Seeds

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Mark 4:26-34

With what can we compare the kingdom of God…  

What do you think of when you hear or read that phrase: the kingdom of God?  I think it’s hard for us to really grasp what Jesus was talking about when he talked about the kingdom of God not only because he described it in metaphors and parables, but because a kingdom, itself, is a thing entirely outside of our experience for almost all of us.

Most of us think of kingdoms in terms of either physical territory or fairy tales, but clearly Jesus is talking about something that transcends mere physical boundaries and is a lot more real than fairy tales.  A kingdom can simply be a territory ruled over by a king or queen, but it can also mean a sphere of authority or rule, and that might be closer to what Jesus is getting at:  the rule of God.  The authority of God.  But even that is something most of us can’t relate to too well because we have never lived under the authority of a monarch or a lord or a master, and those monarchies that are still active in our world are either almost entirely symbolic or wildly dysfunctional or utterly dictatorial.  And I don’t think we want to attribute any of those qualities to God.

Also, words like authority and rule can have a coercive edge to them, and the kingdom, as Jesus describes it, seems to be much more about influence, persuasion and cooperation.  It’s more organic.  It’s something that grows in us and around us and among us.  

I have often used the phrase “kin-dom of God” for that reason—to try to capture some of the cooperative, love-based nature of God’s sovereign rule as Jesus describes it in the beatitudes and parables.  Diana Butler Bass has called it the Commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy, and I think that might be even more in the right direction.  Maybe.  But it’s also important to remember that the kingdom of God is not a democracy.  God is sovereign.  God’s rule is absolute.  Fortunately for us, so is God’s love, and that love is the very fabric of this thing Jesus is trying to describe as “the kingdom of God.”  The kin-dom of God.  The Commonwealth of God’s kindness.

When Jesus told these parables, and thirty-some years later when Mark wrote them down, trouble was brewing in Galilee and Judah and pretty much throughout all of Palestine.  Landowners were putting pressure on tenant farmers for rents they could barely pay.  Scribes from the temple in Jerusalem were demanding a crushing and complex levy of tithes from those same farmers.  Herod Antipas was demanding taxes from the landowners because Rome was demanding taxes from him.  Unemployment was high.  Bandits roamed the highways.  Soldiers patrolled everywhere.  Rome’s colonial government was heavy-handed and oppressive to the point of brutality.  People wanted a heavenly anointed messiah to step in and fix things before they exploded—or maybe to light the fuse and set off the explosion that everyone felt was coming. It’s no wonder that the disciples kept asking Jesus, “Is this the time when you will bring in the kingdom?”

Jesus kept trying to tell them and all the crowds following him, “No, the kingdom of God is not like that.  It’s not what you’re thinking.  It won’t do any good to simply replace one coercive external system with another one even if the ruler is God!”  

The change has to be internal.  It has to be organic.  Seeds have to be planted.  Human hearts and minds have to be changed. It’s not about imposing a new kind of law and order.  It’s about implanting a new kind of love and respect.  That’s what will fix the world.

“The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”

For generations we had a family farm in Kansas—my  mother’s family farm—where we grew winter wheat.  Winter wheat is planted in late September or early October, depending on the weather.  Not long after it’s planted, it starts to sprout.    Beautiful little shoots that look like blades of grass start to poke their heads up out of the soil.  And then just as they’re getting started, the cold hits them.  And it looks like it’s killed them.  They slump back down to the dirt and go dormant, and they’ll just lie there all through the winter.  The ground will freeze.  Snow will drift and blanket over them.  And there’s nothing you can do.  

All winter long you go about your business.  You sleep and rise night and day.  And then you get up one spring morning and notice that the weather is a bit warmer, and the snow is patchy or mostly gone, and you look out the window to see that you suddenly have a field full of beautiful green wheat starting to rise up out of the ground.  It’s an amazing thing to see, and if you have half a sense of wonder, you thank God for the natural everyday miracle of it and marvel at it for at least a moment before you get on with your chores.  

The kingdom of God is like that, says Jesus.  It is seeds scattered on the earth.  Seeds of ideas and vison. And sometimes it looks like they’ve died.  Or been crushed.  Or been frozen out or buried.  Or simply forgotten.  But they are still there, just waiting for their moment.  

The kingdom of God is seeds of ideas and vision and understanding.  They are ideas about fairness and justice and cooperation.  They are an understanding about fuller and more generous ways to love each other and take care of each other.  The kingdom is a resolve to make a world that is healthier for everyone.  It’s a resolution to embrace God’s vision for how the world is supposed to work—a world where everyone is housed and everyone is fed and everyone can learn and everyone is safe and everyone is free to be their true self.  The kingdom is a determination to repair the damage we’ve done and restore creation so that we and all the creatures who share this world with us can breathe clean air and have clean water.

The kingdom of God, the rule of God, the reign of God, the kin-dom of God, the Commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy is a commitment to let justice roll down like water and to show each other kindness and to walk humbly with God and with each other.  It is a continual correction of our vision so we keep learning how to see the image and likeness of God in each other—in each and every face we face so that racism and classism and every other kind of ism evaporate from the earth.  It is the seed of courage taking root in our hearts and minds so that we learn not to be afraid of something or someone simply because it or they are different from us or from what we know or what we expect or what we are used to.

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?,” said Jesus.  “It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

The mustard seed!  That tiny seed that produces the most egalitarian, most democratic of plants!  That’s what God’s kingdom is like.  It freely and bounteously shares itself and all that it has.  Given half a chance it spreads itself everywhere.  The mustard plant doesn’t care if you are rich or poor.  You don’t have to buy one.  It will come to you and give you and your family food and medicine and spices for your cuisine and healing oils for what ails you.  A most amazing, versatile and humble plant.  And it starts as just a little tiny seed.

The kingdom of God is the planting of seeds. The seeds don’t have to be eloquent preaching or brilliant explanations of theology—probably better most of the time if they’re not.  “Preach the gospel at all times,” said St. Francis. “When necessary, use words.”  At a time when the city of Assisi was a rough and dangerous place, Francis would walk through the town from the top of the hill to the bottom and say as he went, “Good morning, good people!”  When he got to the bottom of the hill he would turn to the brother who accompanied him and say, “There.  I have preached my sermon.”  What he meant was he planted a seed—he had reminded the people that the day was good and that they had it in themselves to be good people.

The seeds of the kingdom may be little acts of habit, like bowing your head for a moment to say grace before a meal in a restaurant, even if you don’t say it out loud.  That simple thing might remind those around you to pause, to be thankful, to remember all the connections that bring food to our tables, to remember the goodness of the earth and the sweat of the farmers, to remember the presence of God.

The seeds of the kingdom might be small acts of kindness.  When Oscar Wilde was being brought down to court for his trial, feeling more alone and abandoned than he had ever felt in his life, he looked up and saw an old acquaintance in the crowd.  Wilde later wrote, “He performed an action so sweet and simple that it has remained with me ever since.  He simply raised his hat to me and gave me the kindest smile that I have ever received as I passed by, handcuffed and with bowed head. Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that. It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love, that the saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss the leper on the cheek. I have never said one single word to him about what he did … I store it in the treasure-house of my heart … That small bit of kindness brought me out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony with the wounded, broken, and great heart of the world.”

The seeds of the kingdom might be a word of affirmation and encouragement when it’s needed most.  Helen Mrsola was teaching ninth graders new math years ago.  They were struggling with it.  The atmosphere in the classroom was becoming more tense and irritable every day.  So one Friday afternoon Helen decided to take a break from the lesson plan.  She told her students to write down the name of each of their classmates on a piece of paper, then to also write down something nice about that student.  She collected the papers, and over the weekend Helen compiled a list for each student of what the other students had written. On Monday, she gave each student a paper with list of what the other students liked about them.  The atmosphere in the class changed instantly; her students were smiling again. Helen overheard one student whisper, “I never knew that I meant anything to anyone!” 

Years later, a number of the students, all young adults now, found themselves together again at a school function.  One of them came up to Helen and said, “I have something to show you.”  He opened his wallet and carefully pulled out two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been opened and folded and taped many times.  It was the list of things his classmates liked about him.  “I keep mine in my desk at work,” said another classmate.  Another classmate pulled hers out of her purse, saying she carried it with her everywhere she went.  Still another had placed his in his wedding album.

The kingdom of God.  The rule of God.  The reign of God.  The kin-dom of God.  The Commonwealth of God’s kindness. . . 

To what shall we compare it?

It’s like seeds scattered on the earth, says Jesus.  It’s like mustard seeds.  Seeds of righteousness.  Seeds of justice. Seeds of vision.   Seeds of help.  Seeds of hope.  Seeds of mercy.  Seeds of peace.  Seeds of affirmation.  Seeds of goodness.  Seeds of kindness.   Seeds of love.  

You don’t know how they grow.  But oh, they do grow.

On earth as in heaven.

The Beginning of the Middle of the Story

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Matthew 11:2-11; Isaiah 35:1-10; James 5:7-10

Imagine poor John, locked in the dungeon of Herod’s fortress, his fate hanging by the whims of people who are notoriously immoral and impulsive.  As he stares at the stone walls of his cell he has nothing but time on his hands.  Time to reflect.  Time to remember.  Time to second-guess both his mission and his memory.  Time to doubt.

Did he really see the Spirit descend on Jesus or was it just a trick of the light dancing on the water?  Did he really hear the voice of God or was it, as some said, only thunder bouncing off the hills?  He knows he is going to die soon.  He knows that Herodias will find some reason to have him executed.  If at all possible, he would like to put his doubts to rest before that happens.

So he sends two of his disciples to find Jesus and ask him:  “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  

 It’s easy to brush past John the Baptist even though he comes up in our texts every year at this time.  It’s easy to think of him as a footnote in history, a wild man in the wilderness whose primary purpose was to point to Jesus.  The gospel accounts do tend to skew his story that way, but then the gospels are primarily interested in the story of Jesus, and in that story John is not the central character.

We forget that John, the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah, had hundreds, perhaps even thousands of followers, so many that Herod Antipas saw him as a potential political threat.  The Roman historian, Josephus described John as “this good man, who had commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, righteousness towards one another and piety towards God.”  Many of John’s followers remained loyal to him after his death and even today the Mandaeans, an ethnoreligious group with roots going back to ancient Palestine, regard themselves as followers of John the Baptist whom they see as the greatest of the prophets.  

Muslims know John as Yahya ibn Zakariya, and venerate him as one of the greatest of God’s prophets.  John is also revered by people of the Bahai faith and the Druze.  Clearly his call to live a life of virtue, to treat each other with righteousness, and to revere God resonated beyond his role in the gospels.  In the fullness of history, John was much more than just a prelude to Jesus.

I think one reason we tend to diminish John in our Christian traditions is that we come to him very late in his story and very early in the story of Jesus.  We forget that both of them come in the middle of a much, much larger and longer story, a story that began with God making a covenant with Abraham, a story that is carried through times of slavery and exile in Egypt and Babylon.  It is a story of a people who cling to their covenant and identity during times of foreign oppression by Assyria, Babylon, Greece and Rome.  It is the story of hope kept alive by the leadership, visions and prophetic voices of Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Micah, Amos and others, including John the Baptizer.

It is a story of seeds planted as dreams of a better world, a world where creation, itself, is restored and renewed, where “the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing.”  This longer, larger story plants the seeds of a vision of healing where “weak hands are strengthened” and “feeble knees made firm,” where “the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped” and where “the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”  These are the seeds of God’s vision for a world where captives, exiles and refugees return home, where migrants find a place to put down roots, where all wanderers find a safe place to “obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”[1]  

This longer, larger story is scattered as seeds of peace being sown throughout the world until that much anticipated day when the flower of peace will bloom, that day when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks,” when “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they study war anymore.”[2]

This longer, larger story is the story of hope always on the horizon.  It is the story of a people waiting for the Anointed One who will inaugurate the fulfillment of the vision.

This is the longer, larger story that John inherits.  John enters the story knowing there is so much that still needs to be repaired before the vision he has inherited can become a reality, and that the things most urgently in need or repairing are the human heart, the human way of seeing, the human way of being, the human way of thinking.  He sees the brokenness of the world clearly.  He sees the ways that those who wield power and authority are complicit in that brokenness.  He feels the anxiety and dissatisfaction of the people who bear the scars of living in that predatory and oppressive brokenness.  He sees the dissonance between the world as it is and the world as it should be.

And then he sees Jesus.  And that hope that was always on the horizon seems closer and more possible than ever before.

John points to Jesus.  But John is not done.  John sees the world, and he tells the truth about what he sees.  He calls people to change, to turn around and go a new direction because a reckoning is coming and the new day is dawning.  He speaks truth to power.  And when he publicly condemns Herodias, the wife of Herod Antipas for divorcing Herod’s brother, when he publicly denounces Herod for marrying his brother’s wife, he is arrested.

Languishing in prison, bedeviled by doubt, John sends his question to Jesus:  Are you the one… or should we wait for another?

Jesus doesn’t answer John with bravado or any kind of self-proclamation.  He simply tells John’s disciples to “Go and tell John what you hear and see:  the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.  And blessed is anyone who does not stumble because of me.” 

Jesus is telling John that the things Isaiah foresaw are happening, the signs generations had hoped for are being performed.  Jesus is telling John that in his work the seeds of God’s vision are sprouting and peeking above the soil.  In him the kingdom has begun to arrive.

If you have times of doubt, if you have times when the brokenness of the world seems overwhelming, if you find yourself being punished for speaking truth, remember John.  John had tremendous faith. Among those born of women, said Jesus, there has been no one greater than John.   But when the walls were closing in, even John had his doubts.

If you have times when you wonder if humanity is a lost cause, take a moment to remind yourself that the seeds of God’s vision are still growing and still being planted.  It’s up to us to keep sowing them.  “The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth,” wrote James, “being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.  You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.”[3]  

And finally, it’s always good to remember that we don’t know where we are in God’s longer, larger story.  Yes, the world is still broken, but there are signs of repair work in progress if you know where to look, and one of those signs is you and me.  We are partners in the repair work God is doing in the world.  And that, alone, is cause for rejoicing.  

[1] Isaiah 35:1-10

[2] Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:3

[3] James 5:7-10

This Is The Time

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

It’s time.  

Time to get out the boxes with the special decorations, each one with its own story and all of them together part of the bigger story.  It’s time to deck the halls, to fill the home with light and music.  It’s time to dig out recipes and to bake.  It’s time to prepare.

I loved Christmas as a kid.  I still do.  What I didn’t realize for years, though, was how much I loved Advent.  I loved all the preparation. I loved the anticipation.  I loved the way the house looked when it was all decorated.  I loved the way the kitchen smelled when it was full of baking and roasting.  I loved how everyone, even though they were a bit frazzled, still managed to be in a pretty cheery mood.  

I love the honesty of Advent.  I love the sense of longing in the texts and prayers.  “Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come.”  And yes, Christ has already come to us, but no, Christ has not yet returned, and we surely do feel sometimes like he’s overdue.  There is an honest yearning for things to be better, especially in this year when everything has been scrambled and turned sideways by the pandemic.  “Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down!”  Isaiah shouts for us.  We’re in over our heads.  “Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we might be saved!” the Psalmist cries out for us.  But we also hear, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God… Every valley will be lifted up.  Every mountain and hill made low.  The uneven ground shall be made level and the rough places a plain.”  Things will be smoother.  Something better, something brighter is coming.  Help is on the way.  A new day will dawn.  

I love the way Advent, if we pay attention to it, sets the scene for Christmas by reminding us that we are not the first ones to live in a time of shadows hoping for light.  “During the rule of King Herod of Judea…” we read in the first chapter of Luke.  This is the same King Herod who, in Matthew’s gospel, murdered all the male babies in Bethlehem under age two.  This is the Herod who killed two of his own sons because he suspected them of plotting against him, the Herod who killed his wife Mariamne, the Hasmonean princess, along with her brother and her mother.  This is the Herod who replaced the High Priest in the temple with a Sadducee who would be more inclined to do things the way he wanted them done.  This is the same Herod who, according to Josephus, as he lay dying, ordered that one member of every family in Judea should be slain so that the whole country would be in mourning when he died. Fortunately the order was never carried out, but the people never forgot that it had been issued.  

This is the time, Luke reminds us, when Quirinius is appointed legate of the expanded Roman province of Syria with the specific mandate to carry out a census, something forbidden by Jewish law, so that Tiberius can impose a new tax.  This is a time when Rome’s domination of Judea is iron-clad and iron-fisted with no velvet glove to make it less harsh.  This is a time when work is hard, taxes are heavy, and freedom is limited.

But this is also the time when an angel appears to an aged childless couple, Elizabeth, whose name means “God keeps promises” and to Zechariah, whose name means “God remembers.”  The angel promises them that they will have a child and that they are to name him Yochanan, John, which means “God is gracious,” and that many will rejoice because of him and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit.

This is the time when a kinswoman comes to visit Elizabeth, a young, unmarried kinswoman named Mary, who is also pregnant with a miraculous child.  And when Elizabeth sees her, her unborn child leaps in her womb.  This is the time when Mary sings a prophetic song of joy and rebellion that has been bringing hope to people on the margins for two thousand years.  My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant… He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty…”

This is the time to sit with the candles of hope, peace, joy, and love.  This is the time to remember.  And to look forward.  This is Advent.  And soon, Christmas.

The King shall come when morning dawns and light triumphant breaks, when beauty gilds the eastern hills and life to joy awakes.

Try Wait

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Matthew25:1-13

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.  2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise.  3 When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them;  4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.  5 As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept.  6 But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’  7 Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps.  8 The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’  9 But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’  10 And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut.  11Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’  12 But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’  13 Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

In the middle of Hanalei town on the island of Kauai is a long grassy common area where people can sit and eat or just chill.  Along its southeast edge is a line of shops and a cafe in what used to be the old school building.  There’s also another little food place that sits apart from the old school building and intrudes into the middle of the common.  It’s Federico’s Fresh Mex Cuisine now, and the food’s pretty good.  But that little place used to be Bubba’s Burgers.  And Bubba’s in Hanalei was legendary.

There was always a line of people out the door waiting to get burgers and fries, Bubba’s t-shirts or hats.  And the people working in that place—well you never saw a crew work so hard and so fast to keep a line moving.  And all without air conditioning.  And even though anybody with eyes could see that these amazing people were working as hard and as fast as humanly possible, there was always some Haole bugging the staff to ask when their order would be ready.  When that happened, the person handling orders at the counter would just point to a sign that was 100% pure Hawaiian philosophy: 

TRY WAIT.

Try wait.  

Don’t you love it?  Try wait.

We’ve had a lot of practice this week with “try wait” as we waited for ballots to be counted and results to be reported so we could find out who is going to be president.   It’s been interesting to see how people handled the suspense as we watched states move from one color to another.  I think we could all sympathize with the little three-year old girl who asked, “Mommy, how much longer are you gonna watch the map show?”

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells a story about waiting.  Ten bridesmaids take their lamps and go to meet the bridegroom.  In a traditional wedding the bridegroom would come with his companions to meet the bride at her parents’ house.  Her bridesmaids would then escort her along with the groom and his companions to the groom’s house for the wedding and celebration.  If the wedding was to take place after sunset, the bridesmaids’ lamps would be essential to help keep people from stumbling in the dark.  

When Jesus tells this story it all sounds perfectly normal to his audience.  The bride is assumed to be in her parents’ house waiting with family.  The bridesmaids are waiting in the courtyard.  Five of them were smart enough to bring extra oil for their lamps.  Well of course they did.  Who would be foolish enough not to bring extra oil?  Everyone knows how these things can go.  What if the groom and his friends have a little pre-party party and lose track of time?  What if the groom’s uncle Mordecai is late in arriving from his village?  These things happen.  Of course they brought extra oil.

Ah, says Jesus, but five were not so smart.  They didn’t bring any extra oil.  And the bridegroom was delayed.  Uncle Mordecai was very late.  And it took a while for the best man to sober up.  And all that time the bridesmaids were sitting in the courtyard of the bride’s parents’ house with their lamps burning because any minute now the bridegroom might come. 

But he didn’t.  And they fell asleep.  All ten of them.

Finally, at midnight—Midnight!—somebody shouts that the bridegroom is coming.  The bridesmaids scramble to trim their wicks and refill and relight their lamps.  The foolish five who didn’t bring any extra oil see their lamps sputtering out and ask their sisters to share some of their extra oil.  “No!” they reply.  “There won’t be enough for you and for us.”  

It sounds harsh and stingy, but they’re right to say that.  It’s going to be bad enough that the whole wedding party has to go in procession to the groom’s house with only the dim light of five lamps instead of ten.  How awful would it be if they had ten lamps but they all burned out half way there and everyone was left to stumble blindly in the dark?  What if the bride stepped in donkey dumplings?  Or broke her ankle in a pothole?

And this, if you’re listening to Jesus tell this story in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, this next line is where you would chuckle or maybe even laugh out loud.  “You better go to the dealers and buy some more oil for yourselves,” say the wise bridesmaids to the foolish bridesmaids.  Find a dealer and buy some oil at midnight?  That’s funny, that is.  That’s nonsense! And what’s even more ridiculous?  They try to do it!  These five silly women run off into the night to try to find more oil.  Which, of course, they can’t.

While they were gone, the bridegroom came and the whole wedding party, minus the foolish bridesmaids, made their way to the wedding feast and went inside and shut the gates.  Later the other bridesmaids managed to find their way to the wedding but the gate was already shut.  They banged on the gate and cried out “Lord, lord, open up!  It’s us!”  But he replied, “Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.”

And how could he know them?  He couldn’t see their faces standing out there on the other side of the gate in the dark with no lamp to light them.

Hmm.  So aside from a few chuckles at the expense of the foolish bridesmaids, where is the grace in this story?  Where is the good news?

Well let’s try this.  Let’s say that we’re the bridesmaids.

If we’re the bridesmaids, then it’s both grace and good news that we’re invited to the wedding.  We are invited to the eternal celebration of God’s love.

That invitation is a gift of grace.  But that grace, like freedom, brings with it responsibilities.  That’s the oil in the lamp. A bridesmaid gets to go to the celebration.  But a bridesmaid also has responsibilities as part of the wedding party.

When the foolish bridesmaids are standing in the dark asking to be admitted to the wedding and the gatekeeper says, “Truly, I don’t know you,” it’s an echo of Matthew 7:22-23 where Jesus says,  “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’  Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’”

Clearly it’s not enough just to talk the talk.  It’s not enough even to “do many deeds of power” in Jesus’ name.  God isn’t interested in our showmanship or our piety or our religiosity.  You need to be recognized.  

So what does Jesus want?

In Matthew 5:16 in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”  Light does not illuminate itself.  It illuminates everything it shines on.  Our job is to bring light and to be light, to shine the light on others, to help others see.  Our job is also to be the heat, the energy that gets the work done in a world that needs work so that God’s reign may come on earth as it is in heaven.   

When we bear the light of Christ, when it shines through us like living lamps of God’s love, it makes us recognizable as companions of Christ.  When we bear the light of God’s love we are known by Christ.

Another bit of grace I see in this story, and I admit it doesn’t look like grace or good news at first glance, is in the very last line at the close of the parable where Jesus says,  “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

The grace here is in the warning.  Jesus tells us flat out that the day will come when the door will close.  It is an article of our faith, our creed, that Christ will return.  We don’t talk about it much.  It’s not the centerpiece of our tradition as it is with some.  But it’s there.  

Jesus gives us a warning.  Someday, in your personal life or in the life of the world, the end will come.  It may catch you by surprise.  Keep awake.  Or it may seem like you’ve been waiting forever.  Try wait some more.  Either way, keep awake.  Stay ready.

The big mistake the foolish bridesmaids make in this parable is not that they didn’t bring extra oil. That’s certainly a mistake, but it’s not the mistake that leaves them standing in the dark.  The really huge mistake they make that ends up excluding them from the party is that they go running off into the night to try to find more oil instead of staying with the wedding party to do their main job which was to escort the bride.

On May 18, 1790 the sky was thick and heavy over New England.  The sun was pale and red in the early morning and at dusk, and when the moon rose it was pink.  The next day, May 19th, starting at about  9 or 10 in the morning, the sky began to darken.  By noon the sun was completely obscured, leaving almost all of New England in darkness.  Roosters began crowing.  Hens returned to roost.  Crickets began chirping.  Cows returned to their barns.   Many people, thinking it was the Day of Judgment, hurried to their churches to make confession and pray.  

The Connecticut Governor’s Council happened to be meeting and it was suggested that they adjourn so that they might prepare to meet their Maker.  Councilman Abraham Davenport, a Connecticut militia colonel, wouldn’t hear of it. “I am against adjournment,” he said. “The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause of an adjournment; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be brought.”

Some things take a long time coming.  Our election this week has taught us that.  All votes will be counted and challenges met.  Eventually.  The pandemic will end.  Eventually.  In the meantime, let your light shine.  And when the election and the pandemic are behind us and we start to move forward again, let your light shine some more.  That’s how Jesus will recognize you when he returns.

Keep awake, let your light shine, do your duty… and when necessary, try wait.

(Note:  There is still a Bubba’s Burgers in Kapa’a.  Worth the wait.)

About Those Weeds…

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field;  25 but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away.  26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well.  27 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?’  28 He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’  29 But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.  30 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.’” 

36  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.”  37 He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man;  38 the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one,  39 and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.  40 Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.  41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers,  42 and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!

In 1965, William Youngdahl, the pastor of Augustana Lutheran Church in Omaha, Nebraska became convinced that racism was a pernicious evil, a spiritual cancer destroying the soul of America.  As he thought about how he might address this in his parish, it dawned on him that most of the people in his all-white congregation simply didn’t know any black people—that many had never had an actual conversation with a black person.  Youngdahl thought that a logical first step in confronting racism and white supremacy would be for white people and black people to simply meet and talk to each other.  To introduce the idea to his community, he invited youth from the nearly all-black Calvin Memorial Presbyterian Church to join in worship with his all-white congregation.  That went reasonably well so he prepared to move to the next step in his plan which was to ask couples from his congregation to have dinner at the homes of couples from the Presbyterian congregation.  That’s when polite smiles faded and attitudes surfaced.  He quickly discovered that while the Presbyterians were willing, the members of his own congregation were resistant, passively at first, then more actively so.  At first they simply said they didn’t think people would be comfortable dining at the homes of their black hosts.  Then they said they didn’t think “our people” were quite ready for such a big step.  The more Youngdahl encouraged them to try the idea, the more his Council and other members of the congregation found reasons to object.  They began to accuse him of being divisive and revolutionary.  In the end, they forced him out of his position as pastor.  They saw him as a weed in their field.[1]

It seems that there always people eager to pull the weeds… or at least what they think are the weeds.  

“In Matthew’s day and in every generation,” wrote Robert Smith, “it takes little talent to finger members of the community who look like bad seed.  Where do they come from?  It is easy to lose confidence in the way God runs the universe.”[2]  

The weed Jesus refers to in this parable is almost certainly darnel, lolium temulentum, a poisonous grain that looks so much like wheat that it’s also called “false wheat.”  It’s easy to mistake it for wheat and vice versa if you’re not trained to spot the differences, especially when the plants are just beginning to grow.

Jesus says to let the weeds grow.  The reapers will take care of them when the time comes.  But almost from the beginning the church seems to have not been listening to that particular instruction.

The word “heresy” has cropped up rather frequently in the history of the church.  It comes from the Latin haresis which means “a school of thought or philosophical sect.”  The Latin comes from the Greek heiresis which means “to take or choose for oneself.” In Greek debate it was used to describe “a differing opinion.”  In church use, the conventional meaning of heresy is “a belief or opinion that is contrary to orthodox doctrine.”  Historically in the church, however, heresy”seems to have meant, “Look!  Here’s a weed!  Quick, let’s pull it!”

In 431, at the Council of Ephesus, the teachings of the British Monk and theologian, Pelagius, were condemned as heresy.  Fortunately for Pelagius, he had died in 418 or he might have been in for a rough time, not that he hadn’t been roughed up a bit while alive.  After all, you don’t go toe-to-toe with powerful bishops like Augustine and Jerome without getting a few bruises to your reputation…or your body.  Theologians fought dirty in those days.  And what was the great sin of Pelagianism?  Pelagius had dared to question St. Augustine’s idea of Original Sin, the idea that all of humanity was perpetually wounded by Adam’s sin.  Augustine said that from birth we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. No, said Pelagius, we are born innocent.  True, we are born into a world where sin is nearly inescapable, but we have the gift of free will which is one of the gifts of grace!  We can choose to move toward the love of Christ and Christ’s grace brings us the rest of the way in.  No, said Augustine, our human will is entirely degraded.  The human will is not free.  Pelagius is a heretic.

On the 6th of July in 1415, Jan Hus, a Czech academic theologian,  philosopher and priest was burned at the stake as a heretic for condemning indulgences and crusades.  He had also advocated, like Wycliffe before him, that the scriptures should be translated into the languages of the common people so that everyone could read them for themselves. 

On May 30, 1431, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for heresy and cross dressing.  The church’s case for heresy was weak and Joan answered the inquisition’s questions with pious intelligence. But they had her dead to rights on the charge of dressing like a man.  It didn’t help her cause that she was an inspiring military leader and no slouch as a military strategist.

In 1521, Martin Luther was condemned as a heretic and sentenced to death for his widely circulated writings suggesting church reform.  Some of the reforms he advocated had been proposed by Jan Hus a hundred years earlier.  Luther had developed a large popular following and his denunciation of indulgences hit the church right in the wallet.  Fortunately, because he was under the protection of the powerful Duke Frederick the Wise, the death sentence was never implemented.

In 1633, Galileo Galilei was declared a heretic and forced to recant his assertion that the earth moves around the sun and not the other way around.  He died under house arrest 9 years later.  He was vindicated 359 years later in 1992 when Pope John Paul II admitted that Galileo was right, the earth does move around the sun.  A mere 8 years after that the Church issued a formal apology.  Galileo was unable to attend.

In his book Parables of the Kingdom, Robert Farrrar Capon reminds us that the enemy doesn’t have any real power over goodness. The wheat is already sown.  The reign of God is already in the world and there’s nothing the enemy can do about it.  But, “he can sucker the forces of goodness into taking up arms against the confusion he has introduced, to do his work for him. That is why he goes away after sowing the weeds. He has no need to hang around. Unable to take positive action anyway–having no real power to muck up the operation–he simply sprinkles around a generous helping of darkness and waits for the children of light to get flustered enough to do the job for him.”

All these heretics, all these persons with differing views, were seen in their time as weeds in the field.  Some were pulled and burned, ignoring the advice of Jesus: Let both of them grow together until the harvest.  He tells those who are eager to yank up the weeds that they’re likely to pull up the wheat, too.  Jesus also leaves a cautionary question hanging in the air, a question that echoes through this parable and our history: What makes you so sure you know the difference between darnel and wheat? 

Today, Pelagius is being reevaluated. A fair number of theologians are thinking that maybe he wasn’t entirely wrong and maybe Augustine wasn’t entirely right.  Jan Hus is regarded as a martyr whose ideas planted seeds that flourished in the Reformation.  Joan of Arc has been canonized as a saint and nobody much cares that she wore pants.  Martin Luther is acknowledge as a titanic figure who not only ignited the Reformation but set the stage for the Enlightenment.  Galileo opened our minds to the notion that religious dogma should not stand in opposition to empirical observations.  

Persons and ideas that were thought to be weeds in the field turned out to be wheat.

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.

Do not judge and you will not be judged.  Don’t be in such a hurry to yank those ideas or persons you think are weeds out of God’s field.  Grow and let grow.  In Jesus’ name.

[1] For a thought-provoking look at this story see the documentary A Time For Burning by William Jersey.  Available on YouTube

[2] Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament: Matthew; Robert H. Smith, 1998, p.178