Sermon Notes July 27 Mustard Seed, Romans 8, Gen. 29

July 27, Gen. 29, Rom. 8:27-29, Mt. 13:31-33. 44-52

When I taught at Illinois State they made a big deal about being the biggest band, not the best mind, but the biggest.Issue of big fish in  a small pond-big organizations mean big headaches and great deeds include disasters as well as doing great things

small is resilient. small can be more flexible-steer a jet ski or an aircraft carrier-Don't get me wrong. I am awestruck by the redwoods in Northern California. At the same time, i admire the devotion of a Japanese gardener for a small shrub as well. Small scale items allow us to feel a stake, a participation in something. We crave to be known personally, not be part of a giant statistical data package.

big and small scale God loves the small. Remember EF Schumacher-small is beautiful?

I love that Jesus does not use the example of the acorn into a mighty oak, but a mustard seed creates a nice sized shrub. I love giant sequoia or redwoods, but I love the human sized scale of a shrub too. it is appropriate to its environment, and it can be a home for birds, just like a great tree.In other words, what is the right size? When is small appropriate and when is it not? when I was a child, a 6.5 oz Coke was considered sufficient and now we sell 44oz of glorious carbonation. Mcdonald’s carefully made their tiny ?french Fry bags small to give the illusion of being overflowing, but now we supersize things.Small is capable of doing some things very well. The greatest number of comments I have heard about worship here are all about size at Christmas and Easter, if the crowd was considered big enough or not.we associate small with decline and incapacity. It is a nagging reminder of what once was.

Sometimes we want to feel like the great person but life knocks us down to the level of a shrub. In the dense thicket of family relations in the story of Jacob, Leah is the older sister, but her tricky father substitutes her for the lovely beloved Rachel.She yearns for the love of her husband in this multi spousal family. she offers him her maid to bear children. When she bears children, she names them in hopes that her husband will love hear, or at least see her.Her sister dies in childbirth,a tragedy. her burial place is noted with her husband, perhaps in the cave of the patriarch with Abraham and Sarah and her mother and father-in-law. Leah was made to feel small, unloved and insignificant.

Most of us are, at some point,  Leah is not Rachel. There can be but one homecoming queen, one captain of the football team, one valedictorian.Most of us are made to feel small. Most of us feel that we have much to offer if only someone realized it, could see beneath.One of the things that mystify me is that folks outside the church stereotype it as seeing itself full of rachels, and they claim to be treated as Leahs.That damaged sense of self then leads to all sorts of deception, competition, and the like within our relationships.

Paul’s great doxology at the end of Romans 8 applies to us all, young or old, important or small.At some time or another, we may feel like Leah, unloved, unappreciated, unnoticed. We may well doubt that God loves us because we have thought ourselves or been beaten down into feelings of insignificance. Here it again:NOTHING can separate us from the loved of God in Christ Jesus.the security of that love allows us to blossom and flourish no matter what size we are..

Devotions for week of July 27

Sunday-Ps.17 has more than a hint of being self-satisfied in being good. I am struck by its mention of deceit earlier. Do we try to deceive God? If so, does it emerge from elaborate self-deceit.  Also, I did not realize that apple of your eye came from this psalm's v. 8. What would it mean to your spritual life to be seen as the apple of God;s eye?

Monday-"I believe in my heart that faith in Jesus Christ can and will lead us beyond an exclusive concern for the well-being of other human beings to the broader concern for the well-being of the birds in our backyards, the fish in our rivers, and every living creature on the face of the earth."John Wesley

Tuesday-What piece of truth do you need to discover? As well as the BIG TRUTH that we all yearn for there are "little truths" tucked in the hours of the day. Like treasures hidden in a field, they wait for you. Keep your eyes open and your heart soft!

Wednesday-Blessed are those who know their need for theirs is the grace of heaven.

Blessed are those who weep for their tears will be wiped away.

Blessed are the humble for they are close to the sacred earth.

Blessed are those who hunger for earth's oneness for they will be satisfied.

Blessed are the forgiving for they are free.

Blessed are the clear in heart for they see the Living Presence.

Blessed are the peacemakers for they are born of God.  from John Philip Newell's book, Praying with the Earth

Thursday-Last Sunday’s reading on the mustard seed in Mt. 13 had me thinking about the value of attention to the small. Especially, I wonder about our floating through life, or having the yee on the big prize and we fail to “stop and smell the roses.” If a par tof spiriutal life is to pay attention to one’s life, do we not often rush through our days? In seeking something great, do we miss the treasures before us?

Friday-the reading from Gen. 29 had me thinking about both honoring and devaluing the value of being sly, tricky, deceitful, pick the word. We admire the clever, at least until they trick or embarrass us. We like to see the clever eaten at their own game. We realize that being clever can  balance out a weakness in another are.

Saturday-Malannie Svoboda asks if truth needs to be blared with a trumpet, or if it speaks more quietly. Should the truth speak softly or does it require a big stick. I think of the Nazi dictum to tell  a lie loudly and often. Does the turth n action speak clealry but it does no have to be loud? What doe shtis suggest aobut all of the strident voices in our time?

OT Notes Genesis 29

Can you imagine the intrigue in the family of Jacob with 4 wives? (Would you not call all 4 women wives in our time?) this is a good sermon starter on relationships, on meeting for the first time, on the diffiuclt dynamics of relationships.

Leah draws my sympathy here. Why would Laban do this? Did she consent?

Her eyes could be called tender, as if she had been crying or perhaps sensitive? They could mean light colored; it could me compassionate looking, i suppose-it could mean weak as in near sighted.

It is obvious that Rachel is gorgeous. Unlike the Isaac story where we are never told of Rebecca's love for him, here we get comparison that Leah is loved less than Rachel.Look sat how she named the children in relationship to Jacob and God later.Note where she was buried.

what do you think the relationship became of the sisters?

7 years is a long time. When is it easy or difficult for you to wait?

Few of us are rachels, but it may be a good practice to try to live within her heart and mind.

Jacob seems as if he should be Laban's son, no? Why did Jacob agree to 7 years and then seven more? How do you think they got along over time? (See the story as it progresses)

I love the poetry that the 14 years seemed like 14 days to Jacob. when have you felt that way, if ever?

this could be a good time to explore the well as a type scene in Scripture.

Devotional Pts Week of July 20

Sunday-Ps. 139 appears in today’s readings.  This meditation gives us the deep sense that god knows us better thna we know ourselves.  Atthe end it speaks of anxious thoughts (NIV). What anxiety in your life get s in your way, even of prayer? What anxiety would you mos tlike God to quiet and quell?

Monday-What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world."~ Barbara Brown Taylor, from An Altar in the World

Tuesday-"All Earth Is Hopeful," ELW 266 An Advent hymn during Pentecost, you ask? Why not! There is no better time than the present (especially a present time when we encounter texts that describe what it looks like when earth is hopeful) to join all of creation in praising God. Both text and tune of this hymn reveal the already/not yet-ness of God's work. That this hymn is originally in Spanish highlights this even more since the Spanish verb esperar means both "to wait" and "to hope." Indeed, hopeful waiting exhibits elements of present fulfillment: "The Savior comes at last!" And yet, there is room for more: "Furrows lie open for God's creative task." I love this poetic phrase as it reflects the hopeful expectancy of all creation (including us!) for God to continue to create. The verse-to-verse movement of this text mirrors the rhythm of the church year and even, perhaps, the rhythm of our lives: God's coming is foretold. God comes near. God is present!  (From God Pause)

Wednesday-Ira Kent Groff-we can notice incremental or sudden physical or psychological diminishments--abuse or pain, diabetes or cancer, losses of relationships or function. I'm reminded of Teilhard de Chardin's metaphor of "passive diminishments." What are some of these for you? The way you choose to fight or embrace these is Spirit-work in our afternoon journey in life. How can you cultivate little pieces of creativity arising from such diminishments?

Thursday From F. Buechner To eat this particular meal together is to meet at the level of our most basic humanness, which involves our need not just for food but for each other. I need you to help fill my emptiness just as you need me to help fill yours. As for the emptiness that's still left over, well, we're in it together, or it in us. Maybe it's most of what makes us human and makes us brothers and sisters.

Friday-From Benjamin Corey-When we consciously or unconsciously judge the heart and motive of another person, we sin against the God who is the only one able to judge such matters. The far better option when we encounter someone we disagree with or who sees things differently than we do, is to simply assume the best in them. This doesn’t mean we agree with each other all the time, but it does mean our hearts are more humble and tender when we do.

Saturday-From Richard Rohr-The Gospel gives our suffering personal and cosmic meaning, by connecting our pain to the pain of others and, finally, by connecting us to the very pain of God. Any form of contemplation is a gradual sinking into this fullness, or what I call the unified field, which always produces a deep, irrational, and yet very certain hope. And we never know exactly where it came from!

Sermon Notes for July 20 on sighs too deep for words

July 20 Rom. 8:12-27. Mt. 13:24-30, 36-43

We always think of prayer as talking to God and seeking a response. Here, prayer exists within the divine life itself.At its best, Sunday worship together is a long prayer service to touch different parts of our condition. We enter worship bowed down by troubles, personal or in the family. It could be worry about a declining spouse or an adult child afflicted with mental illness.In a way, Sunday worship also helps us to listen in to the divine conversation aobut the state of our lives. In the face of trouble the spirit responds with Sighs too deep for words. In the face of tragedy, even the divine is at a loss for words.

Sighs too deep for words hits any minister between the eyes as we struggle to use our frail vessels of words to carry some of the riches an depths of our faith.I always think of Thomas Long’s story of a minister coming back from a shortened vacation to be with a family whose uncle had died too young. with his cheap suit flapping in the breeze, he carried his prayerbook to his chest like a life preserver, Dear God what to say, what to say.

My mother asked me to lead the service for my brother.That was difficult, but I think it made things a bit more bearable in time.

Unlike those who wish or need to perceive only blessings, and perceive them even when imagined, Paul faces suffering squarely.the Spirit is the spirit of life. The spirit is the being free to be in the family of God (last will and testament?) Both NT ;passage this morning deal with the end.Paul sees the Christ as the beginning of the labor pains for all of creation.

Later in life, Augustine the theologian and bishop of a town in North Africa was faced with folks who wanted the church to be utterly pure. He seized on our gospel reading and linked it to the church itself as a body of people all mixed together. Thomas Long (Princeton, now Emory) got me looking at the parable of the wheat and weeds in a presentation he made before his book on god and human suffering was published..Life, in his view, is filled with wheat and weeds that grow together as the sheer fact of human life. We pray,  since we live in a world mixed with weeds and crops, suffering and joys all the time and often mixed together.Part of the story that intrigues me is that the weed, darnel, resembles wheat, so that if you try to extirpate it, you will get wheat too. I think of the old gardening motto, the way to distinguish a valuable plant from a weed is to pull on it. An old reading book from youth came back to me where a boy tended a new garden and carefully weeded out some of his plants as well. if it comes out with little effort, it is a valuable plant: think of the roots on dandelions. Part of its lesson for me is to expose   our willingness to see others as weeds and ourselves as valuable, but things are so mixed up within and without that one cannot go about with weed killer without harming the valuable product. We have not developed moral engineering that makes roundup resistant valuable plants. this parable frees us from our tendency to judge others as worthy or not, and to remind us that god is responsible for sorting us out. As the old Thanksgiving hymns ays, all the world is god’s own field.

Another version of thoughts on Mt. 13

This Sunday, many churches will read the parable of the sower and the seed from Matthew 13. It is an excellent example of the difficulties of biblical interpretation as it presents the parable and then a bit later an explanation by allegory of different elements of the story. In earliest times, the early church felt it necessary to include some interpretative aids to reading the words of Jesus for their particular time and situation. This story brings to light many issues, but one is a perennial one, why do people respond in different ways to a religious message? In our time, if one doesn’t like the rural image, think of it as broadcasting a message you are convinced is worthy.

 In some the seed, the message, of faith does not take root. In others, it is not well-rooted and falls apart easily.  In the Reformed religious tradition, this is the core contention that faith grows over the course of a lifetime, develops throughout one’s life, and does not reach full maturity in a flash of emotional response. How well rooted are we in the faith? What roots us more deeply? Engagement with Scripture and prayer, including weekly Sabbath worship, are two fundamental exercises of our faith. Many of us are so cavalier about religious thought and practice that we do not let our religious level keep pace with our maturation in other dimensions of life.

What attacks the seedbed of faith? Perhaps another way to go at the sower is a diagnostic device both personal and public. Do what degree do we harbor and encounter the vices that attack the seed of Christian faith and life? To what degree does our congregation reflect these different elements that may well impede its full life in Christ? In the sower parable we are threatened by our surprise that the faith is not all about personal blessings, but that it conflicts, and often, with the thought world most of us inhabit day by day. In that sense, conversion is more than mouthing a few magic words or undergoing an emotional experience of freedom or of the glories of salvation, but a revolution in the way we look and act in the world. Where does one even begin to address the way the weeds of the world choke off our growth as Christians. Once again, I am sharecropping, and a particular set of noxious weeds threatens to overtake growth that would threaten its lush tall and green.

This parable makes a powerful point about the allure of wealth and other features of the world. Notice that I said allure. All the way back to the story of Adam and Eve, we see that evil is enticing. Since religious faith often contains an element of being a killjoy, if it’s attractive then it’s no good,  

Even more starkly, the thorns that choke off spiritual growth could be the very blessings that one seeks. Ease and prosperity work against religion since human nature assumes good things occur due to our virtues and abilities. In other words, blessings make us feel independent of divine pathways.

The cares of the world have a way of draining the energy from us. In this image, the worries of life are invasive, At times, nothing drives us to prayer more than trouble. If the trouble is cleared up, we go on. If the trouble recurs, we may grow resentful of unanswered prayer. Sometimes the hardest journey for someone in grief is to go back to church.

In the end, the seed and its growth, that mix of soil and seed, is the work of God’s hand. Jesus assumed that the soil was rich enough for all to hear and heed. The story makes us realize that religious faith and practice is neither easy nor automatic for most of us. It also gives us the chilling thought that our own lives can be the obstacles toward the faith stance of others.

July 13 sermon notes Rpm. 8:1-11 Mt/ 13

July 13 Rom. 8:1-11, Mt. 13

God is the god of life, the spirit of life.That life pertains to this world and the world to come, of life and peace Life is one vivified by the Spirit.”Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. “When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." .... Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved."  ―. Nouwen

Why is condemnation still such a feature of christian life (greek word=judging down/looking down) Where is all of the anger and need for disputation coming from? I had a flurry of protests of celebrating the 4th as it interrupted a focus on failings Life presents obstacles and dangers all of the time.I do try to respect people’s individuality, but I also like to look at patterns in human attitudes or  behavior. Paul is dividing people along one dimension flesh or spirit. We need the spirit to be able to take in and offer life to one another. For Paul reminded us in the previous chapter that human psychology is so confused, the good I wish to do I don’t do, and the evil I wish to avoid, I do.

The parable of the sower and seed pushes us to wonder why we reject life in the spirit so cavalierly. How well rooted am I in the faith? What roots us more deeply? engagement with Scripture and prayer, including weekly Sabbath worship,  are two fundamental exercises of our faith. Calvin thought that the spirit even brings the Scripture to life, otherwise, it is merely a dead letter on a page.That’s why our tradition emphasizes illumination so fully. Notice not our own supposedly incandescent selves but illumination from the divine source. Calvin also called prayer the chief exercise of faith.

Baptismal question from the  RC do you reject the glamor of evil. Christians often deeply suspect and even resent the thought that non-religious folks have more fun than they do.

What attacks the seedbed of faith?Perhaps another way to go at the sower is a diagnostic device both personal and public. Do what degree do we harbor the vices that attack the seed of christian faith and life? To what degree does our congregation reflect these different elements that may well impede its full life in christ? In the sower parable we are threatened by our surprise that the faith is not all about personal blessings, but that it conflicts, and often., with the thought world most of us inhabit day by day. In that sense, conversion is more than mouthing a few magic words or undergoing an emotional experience of freedom or of the glories of salvation, but a revolution in the way we look and act in the world. Where does one even begin to address the way the weeds of the world choke off our growth as Christians. Once again, i am sharecropping, and a particular set of noxious weeds threatens to overtake growth that would threaten its lush tall  green..the cares of the world have a way of draining the energy from us. In this image, the worries of life are invasive, and the growth, that mix of soil and seed, is the work of God’s hand.