Background: Last Sunday’s Gospel reading was Matthew 21:33-46, known as The Parable of the Wicked Tenants. It’s the second of three parables Jesus presents to the Temple priests, elders, and Pharisees, painting a harsh picture of how Israel is not living up to their name in their disobedience to God. This is the text of a homily I presented to the Christ Church Easton Zoom prayer service. Since our time with the Gospel is also a discussion, questions and answers people had changed and shaped things somewhat differently than what is written here.
“Listen to the Overlooked”
This conversation between Jesus and the chief priests and Pharisees began last week for us, when Jesus entered the Temple and was grilled by the priests and the elders about who he thought he was and where he gets his authority. And Jesus gave them a parable about a father asking two sons to go work in the vineyard, the first said he wouldn’t go, but then did, the second said that he would go and then didn’t. And Jesus made sure they caught onto the chief priests and the Temple leadership being the second son, who talks a big game, but then doesn’t do what they said they would.
And now Jesus takes it further. He relates the parable of the wicked tenants to them. This isn’t about saying one thing and then failing to deliver. This reaches another level. It’s outright disobedience and being self-serving despite all they’ve been given.
Michael Green in his book, “The Message of Matthew,” says:
“This parable unveils the flagrant disloyalty of the leaders of Israel. God had given them a wonderful vineyard to cultivate; he had given them all the necessary equipment to do the job (a winepress, a watchtower for shelter and burglar patrol, a wall to keep out the wild pigs and other trespassers). He had put his trust in them. And what did they do? The history of Israel tells the story starkly. In brief, they appropriated his goods, rejected his prophets, denied his rightful claims on them and killed his Son. They were given freedom as well as trust, but the day of reckoning is at hand: they will be held accountable for the way they have exercised that freedom.”
This is helpful to know how Jesus felt about the priests and Pharisees. In a reading we haven’t discussed in this part of the lectionary, the start of Jesus entering the Temple here is him driving out all who were selling and buying and overturning the tables of the money changers. This is the time of table-flipping Jesus. And now he is telling it like it is.
Jesus is calling out those who have been charged with doing God’s work, but who instead are looking after their own assumed power. But let’s not tell ourselves that what we are reading is simply supposed to point out and remind us of the disobedience of past people and generations—is it possible that church today, that we might also sometimes be the wicked tenants who tried to act like the vineyard was theirs and ignore the will of the owner?
Jesus then goes into quoting Psalm 118 verbatim when he says:
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.”
In this case, the SON and the STONE can be thought of as the same. Where they are ignoring and casting off John and Jesus, a new movement will begin that will have them as the main cornerstone, the foundation.
Let’s take a step back and look at some reasons why Jesus might be so upset with the chief priests and the Pharisees. What do you think?
They are putting the letter of the law over the intent.
They have ignored John the Baptist and now Jesus.
They are more worried about maintaining their own power than they are about the welfare of their people.
They are being exclusive rather than inclusive.
They are ignoring their responsibility to the poor, the sick, the downcast.
And what is it that Jesus is doing that is different? What do we see when we look at Jesus’s ministry?
He includes those who have been excluded—tax collectors, prostitutes, sinners, and when called upon, Gentiles.
He is healing the sick and caring for the poor.
He isn’t concerned about status or worldly power.
When it comes to things like the Sabbath, Jesus is following the intent of the law, not the letter of the law when it comes to helping people who are hurting.
Jesus views himself as a servant first, he is there to help, and to lead by serving.
Let’s fast forward to our time. Even though we wear his logo and worship his name, are we still ignoring Jesus? What would it look like for the church to be obedient, to follow him and live as he did now?
Talking about the rejected stone, the rejected Son, Fr. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and writer who we are studying, says:
“Jesus reminds us that sometimes it is the overlooked person who is the one we need to pay attention to.”
Who are the overlooked people now who we might want to pay attention to?
I doubt anyone can hear the things that Jesus taught and look at the life he lived and say, “no, that’s just a bad idea.” I wonder if part of what happened to the Pharisees and to the world today is that our hearts are out of step with God and that gets in the way of our following.
I’ve been reading Meister Eckhart lately, who lived from 1260 to 1328. He was a German Catholic theologian, mystic, and a part of the Dominican Order of Preachers. He is someone who seems to help me get out of my own way and do a better job of being open and listening for what God might want to say to me.
Let’s try a couple of his sayings and see if there is something helpful:
“Breaking Through”
Too often I decide what my life should be and whether
there is from in it for You while You sit in a deeper
place within me, wondering what it will take for me to
make more of all the things in my life—the good and
the bad—and so to learn to break through to find You
in all that is and let You take form in me in all that
I was and am and will be.
I wonder if too often our own ideas of what we should do push out any room in our hearts for God to operate. Did the Pharisees and chief priests have such fixed ideas of who God was and how he would speak to them, that it prevented them from stepping out in faith to trust the new direction John and Jesus offered?
On top of that, I wonder if what Jesus was modeling, what he was showing those in power was too radical, too much of a change for them when they came to enjoy so much the power and the status they had.
Here is one more from Meister Eckhart on what it looks like to follow Jesus:
“You Rise by Stooping Down”
With You everything is upside down
and inside out, for You rise by
stooping down, and call me
to follow in the footsteps
of your descent, where I find
that You and I are one
In being and even in power.
Jesus rises by stooping down. He became incarnate, he humbled himself, and he called and showed himself to be a servant. Where we are in Matthew’s Gospel is Jesus on his way to the cross, to his death. He is trying to get everything he can across to his disciples, as well as being critical of the Pharisees, giving them another chance to repent and obey.
We have seven Sundays left in the lectionary year. Something to consider in the way these readings are presented to us. We read and reflected on Matthew’s telling of Jesus being arrested, crucified, and resurrected earlier this year, in Lent, Holy Week, and Easter.
We finish the church’s year with this series of teachings, warnings, and parables, and then November 26 is “Christ the King” Sunday, and the last reading we will get from Matthew before moving into Advent and the new year for the church, will be Matthew 25:31-46. Those will be the words we hear and reflect on to close this Gospel and then begin our Mark year.
Does anyone know the story?
Here is a key takeaway:
“Truly I tell you, just as you did (or did not do) it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did (or did not do) it to me.”
Background: On Sunday mornings at Christ Church Easton we have morning prayer and a discussion of the week’s lectionary Gospel reading on Zoom (in addition to three in-person services with Communion). Each Zoom discussion is different, depending on the reading and who is participating–in that way each discussion is organic and in places unscripted. So when I put together notes for a homily, some of it gets used, other parts don’t, and the key is to find the questions that are engaging people. This past Sunday, the Gospel reading was Matthew 20:1-16, in which Jesus tells the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, where the landowner sends workers into his vineyard in waves from early morning right up until one hour to go in the evening. He then pays all of them the same usual daily wage. And the workers who had been there all day say it isn’t fair.
This is the homily I put together, though the discussion itself moved in different ways and there were parts that weren’t used and great questions and comments that aren’t written down.
(The image above is “Red Vineyards at Arles” by Vincent Van Gogh, 1888)
“Rethinking Fairness”
How many people are bothered by this parable? And what is it that rubs you the wrong way about it?
Our sense of fairness is disturbed. Even though those who worked from the early morning got exactly what they were promised, what they agreed to, which was a good wage for their work. And it was the landowner who offered them work in the first place.
The context of this reading, what we haven’t heard just before it, was Jesus and the rich young man, who kept all the commandments and was doing everything right, and he asked Jesus what else he had to do. And Jesus tells him to “sell all your possessions, give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” And the young man goes away grieving, because he had many possessions.
Jesus tells his disciples that it’s really hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. This goes against all the thinking of the day, where the rich were looked at is being in God’s good graces. That makes the disciples ask who can be saved? And Jesus tells them, “For mortals it’s impossible, but for God, all things are possible.”
And here is the line we are waiting for. Peter gets worked up and says, “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”
Jesus reassures them that when the time comes, they will be taken care of. But he can tell they are missing the point of everything. So we get the parable of the laborers in the vineyard.
Let’s look at the story. What can we say about the landowner? What do we notice about him and how he does things?
He is the one out finding the workers. It would have been more likely to see a manager or one of his employees, but it’s the landowner himself out there.
Michael Green in his book “The Message of Matthew” puts it like this—
“…he goes out himself. Indeed, he goes out repeatedly to seek them. They are hungry, unemployed, and as the day wears on, increasingly hopeless. He cares about that. He wants to give them a job to work and a reward.”
Then we get the payment. Everyone who works gets the same thing, a day’s wages. The order in which people are paid is a zinger, paying the last first, so that the early arrivers see what they are given.
“The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard,” by Rembrandt, oil on panel, 1637.
I love this perspective from Debie Thomas in her book, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories.” She looks through a contemporary lens:
“The landowner in Jesus’s story doesn’t judge his workers by their hours. He doesn’t obsess over why some workers are able to start at dawn and others are not. Perhaps the late starters aren’t as literate, educated, or skilled as their competitors. Perhaps they have learning challenges, or a tough home life, or children to care for at home. Perhaps they’re refugees, or don’t own cars, or don’t speak the language, or can’t get green cards. Perhaps they struggle with chronic depression or anxiety. Perhaps they’ve hit a glass ceiling after years of effort, and they’re stuck. Perhaps employers refuse to hire them because they’re gay or trans or disabled or black or female.”
That’s the thing with Jesus’s parables—he gives us a story with just enough information to get our brain turning, but he doesn’t fill in all the details—that is for us to do. And often his parables disturb us and our sense of how things are.
Back to the parts of our story: we’ve got the landowner sending everyone into the vineyard, we’ve got payment being made, and then we have the reaction.
The last into the field are the first to get paid, and they get a day’s wages. As the first, the earlier workers approach, they are expecting more. And then they get upset.
“These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.”
And the landowner says, didn’t I give you what I promised you, what we agreed to? Am I not allowed to give what belongs to me how I choose? Are you envious because I am generous?
What a question. I wonder, is it his generosity that offends or disturbs us here?
Here’s the thing. Part of why our sense of fairness is put off here is that we instantly identify with the laborers who went out at dawn, who have been out in the vineyard the longest.
Let’s move the parable into what it’s really addressing here: salvation. I have to tell you, when it comes to my life, to my faith—I am not one of the early arrivers. Like most things in life, I got there late.
What do the Gospels and Paul’s letters tell us over and over again: we are not saved by works, we are saved by grace, which is a gift from God. We can’t earn grace and it’s not a competition.
Here is Michael Green again:
“Grace, amazing grace, is the burden of this story. All are equally undeserving of so large a sum. All are given it by the generosity of the employer. All are on the same level. The poor disciples, fisherman and tax collectors as they are, are welcomed by God along with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There are no rankings in the kingdom of God.”
If we fast forward to after Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension, into the Book of Acts, what happens at and after Pentecost—Peter and the disciples bring more and more into the fold, baptizing and teaching thousands. They didn’t have the attitude of, “Hey—where were these guys while Jesus was here—these new disciples have it so much easier.” Instead, Peter and company are thrilled to have more workers in the vineyard.
I wonder if the problem here is us and our small sense of fairness. Maybe God’s sense of fairness is bigger and more expansive than ours is, and that is a good thing.
Grace, like forgiveness which we’ve been talking about for the past couple weeks, depends on our receiving it and paying it forward. God’s plan is to include everyone.
Back to Thomas to bring it home:
“Could it be any more obvious that we are wholly dependent on each other for our survival and well-being? That the future of creation itself depends on human beings recognizing our fundamental interconnectedness and acting in concert for the good of all? That ‘what’s fair’ for me isn’t good enough if it leaves you in the wilderness to die? That my sense of ‘justice’ is not just if it mocks the tender heart of God? That the vineyards of this world thrive only when everyone has a place of dignity and purpose within them? That the time for all selfish and stingy notions of fairness is over?”
A question/thought that came up in our Zoom discussion today was, “How can people learn to be generous if they don’t experience it?” That’s so true. Those that were invited into the vineyard last experienced that kind of generosity. Let’s step into that.
Put yourself in the life of those that arrived at 5:00pm, for whatever reason. Imagine the joy you feel, imagine the gratitude, imagine going home and what you would say to your family. Imagine how you might be inclined to treat other people you encounter?
Maybe this is how we should think of fairness, the same way we think of grace and mercy and love.
Background: Last Saturday evening there was a wedding on Saturday evening at Christ Church Easton, so we moved our Alive @ 5 contemporary music service into the Parish Hall and served dinner at the end of the service. The band was in the style of MTV Unplugged and the Parish Hall was full of good food and fellowship. The Gospel from the lectionary last weekend was Matthew 18:15-20, where Jesus outlines how to deal with conflict/sin between people in the community. With our Rector/Pastor officiating the wedding, I preached at our Saturday evening service.
“Bearing With Each Other”
“Christian conflict resolution” is not a class that would have a waiting list to get into. It comes off a bit like a root canal—necessary, but not something to look forward to.
But when you look around society and how we deal with feeling wronged, we do need some guidance. These days there are a lot of passive-aggressive outlets out there. What are some notable passive-aggressive ways to not actually deal with conflict?
If your neighbor has done something to you, you might go through the neighborhood association, or contact the town. When a friend makes us angry, we might defriend or block them on social media, or write huffy, angry comments under something we disagree with. Politicallythese days, when someone slights or disagrees with someone, the goal is to discredit, belittle, shame, and have others pile on. Nothing is resolved. And resentment becomes more deeply rooted.
When someone wrongs us, when someone sins against us, we want things to be made right, for us. Our self-righteousness demands satisfaction.
That’s not what’s going on in today’s reading. Jesus is looking at this earliest church community, not society at large. And he is giving instructions for the benefit of the sinner, whose actions are pulling him/her/them outside of the community. Jesus is giving the disciples steps to restore that person, to keep the community together.
What an unmodern concept—to care about the sinner, and about the community, more than our own sense of justice.
This is a teaching about reconciliation, and it’s reconciliation based on love and forgiveness.
It’s not easy. It’s counter-cultural. It doesn’t make sense with how our laws are written.
But community can’t be built on the law. Legalism won’t save us. If you look at most laws, including those in Scripture, they’re drawn up around doing no harm. And that’s not bad—those kinds of laws help keep us safe.
When it comes to a faith community, safety isn’t enough.
Jesus doesn’t summarize the commandments by saying, “don’t harm God and don’t harm your neighbors.”
We’re called to love.
God doesn’t want us to coexist (though the sentiment on those blue bumper stickers is better than the alternative of wiping each other completely out of existence).
God wants us to thrive. To help one another. To be there for each other. To love one another.
Both Paul, writing today’s New Testament reading, and Jesus, speaking in today’s Gospel, want to make sure we get the message loud and clear.
When we love, we more than fulfill the law. And Jesus looks at conflict within the church community through love.
When there is conflict, where someone is going astray: deal with it, fix it, work it out. This is where things get hard for us, especially in a church. Historically, churches have publicly fallen on their faces with conflict resolution on big issues. Look at how many scandals and atrocities have been dealt with by the church, by transferring an offending clergyperson somewhere else—out of sight, out of mind, not our problem. That’s conflict, that’s crime, and that’s reconciliation on a different scale, but it’s real and something the church has to deal with in order to be the example it needs to be in the world.
As parishioners, on a much lesser scale, when it comes to having an issue with someone in the congregation, we might find it easier to find another church rather than work through something difficult when someone has wronged us.
Avoidance is an easier path than reconciling. And there is a cost to that.
Best-selling author, theologian and Bishop N.T. Wright says:
“Reconciliation is a huge issue today. We can see the results of not doing it: suicide bombs, campaigns of terror, heavy-handed repression by occupying forces. That’s on the large scale. On the small scale, we see broken marriages, shattered families, feuds between neighbors, divided churches.”
Jesus knows how hard it is going to be for the early church to stick together in community, especially once he is gone. And he goes straight at things, right up front.
He says, first, try to work it out between the two of you. If that doesn’t work, take a couple people with you. Expand that circle slowly. Allow the person to save face as much as possible.
Jesus doesn’t say—talk about that person, gossip, try to get everyone on your side. Instead, deal with it quickly and between the two of you.
Let’s remember the goal: bringing the sinner back into the fold, keeping the community together. All while dealing with what happened.
Here is N.T. Wright again:
“Forgiveness doesn’t mean saying “it didn’t really happen” or “it didn’t really matter.” Forgiveness is when it did happen and it did matter, and you’re going to deal with it and end up loving and accepting one another again anyway.”
We are sinners, all of us. We all mess up. We all fall off the path we are trying to walk. Forgiveness, grace, love—how God deals with us, is how we are to deal with each other.
What does the church need? Reconciliation (that’s our word of the night). The mission of the church is to reconcile the world to God. To do that, we have to model it in our midst. Not in some abstract way, but right down into the details of our lives and how we treat each other.
There’s a part of this reading that is easy to miss. Jesus tells the disciples that when an offender refuses to listen even to the church, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
Let them go, as outsiders.
What do we know about Matthew from the text a few weeks ago? He’s a tax collector. And Jesus still loved and restored him. Even in continued disagreement and going separate ways, the goal is still restoration.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer has a little book called “Life Together,” where he looks at Christian community. He says that when it comes to ministry in a community, listening, active helpfulness, and bearing with others are foundational. He says it is hard to bear the sin of another person because it breaks fellowship with God and with his brother.
“It is only in bearing with him that the great grace of God becomes wholly plain. To cherish no contempt for the sinner but rather to prize the privilege of bearing him means not to have to give him up as lost, to be able to accept him, to preserve fellowship with him through forgiveness… As Christ bore and received us as sinners so we in fellowship may bear and receive sinners into the fellowship of Jesus Christ through the forgiving of sins.”
And Bonhoeffer ties it together saying that “where ministry of listening, active helpfulness, and bearing with others is faithfully performed, the ultimate and highest service can also be rendered, namely, the ministry of the Word of God.”
If as a community, we aren’t oriented towards listening, actively helping, and bearing with others, we are going to have a hard time ministering the Word of God to others. Because where would it be found in our lives and our community?
And then we get to these incredible last lines of the reading: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
How many people have heard that line before? How many have used it in the context of gathering together? And how many realized that Matthew includes those words from Jesus, here, when he is talking about sin, disagreement, and reconciliation—not at the Last Supper, or the Sermon on the Mount, or some hopeful healing or miracle. It’s here, where or when we are struggling, maybe even divided, that we need to remember and call on his presence among us.
If we as the church are going to reconcile the world to God, we aren’t going to do it on our own. We need God’s help. Thankfully, God has already done the work, in and through Jesus, who is with us, always.
And if we are going to call on his name, and continue his work, we’ve got to work through the tough stuff, not brush it under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen.
We’ve got to listen, we’ve got to help, we’ve got to bear with each other. That’s what love and forgiveness look like.
Amen.
Bonus quote, which we used in our Zoom discussion about the Gospel reading on Sunday morning. The quote comes from Padraig O’Tuama’s book, “Daily Prayer With the Corrymeela Community”–
“Listening is a sacrament when the topic is important, and when strife divides people in small places, the sacrament of listening is vital. So many people and so many places in the world have difficult relationships with difference. We seek to practice the art of hospitality in the places of hostility, and in so doing practice kindness in places the most in need of kindness.”
Lead in: I just finished my second year of seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are going to school.July 15 and 16 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.
Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.
The Gospel reading for July 16 was Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23, “The Parable of the Sower,” where Jesus tells a parable to large crowds gathered by the sea to listen to him, then explains it in private to his disciples.
The image used at the top of the page is “The Sower” by Vincent Van Gogh.
What Will We Do with New Life?
How many people have heard the “Parable of the Sower” before? And how many people have then sat and tried to figure out, “Hhhmmm, which kind of soil am I?”
That’s a fair question to ask. We want to figure out how we relate to the story. At the same time it takes the Gospel message and makes it all about us, the readers or listeners.
I wonder though, if we might hear the Parable of the Sower and wonder what it tells us about the character of God? What can we learn about His kingdom?
Let’s start with the soil. By itself, soil is just soil. And it will go on being soil. But when the Sower adds a seed, that’s when transformation happens; the soil becomes a part of the process of new life springing forth.
Michael Green, in his book, “The Message of Matthew,” tells us:
“It’s not just ‘a farmer’ who went out to sow his field. It is (literally) ‘the farmer’ and he comes bringing the precious seed which can transform the soil. The kingdom comes when the soil and the seed get together. It is a marriage of seed and soil. The seed is the word of God proclaimed by the Sower of God. And the kingdom begins to come to life when the ‘soil’ receives the seed of the word for itself. Then it begins to germinate and shoot.”
In Matthew’s telling of the parable, Jesus is the Sower, and God’s Word, spread generously into the soil, adds what wasn’t there, what we can’t add on our own, what we need God to do. And that changes everything. He changes everything.
Through his sowing of the Word, Jesus is creating his kingdom in and among us. And listen to how He sows: some seeds fell on the path, other seeds fell on rocky ground, other seeds fell among thorns, other seeds fell on good soil. God is not stingy with his seeds, he spreads them everywhere. And that’s good news for us, for sure.
“Starlight Sower,” by Hai Knafo.
Why is that good news? First, we can’t create this transformation, this new life, on our own. We can’t plant the seed, it’s not our seed. We need God to take the initiative. Forgive me a cheesy pun, but in my head I hear a version of Tom Cruise’s voice from the movie Top Gun saying, “We feel the need for SEEDS!” And I apologize if that is the only line you remember from this sermon.
There are more reasons why it is good news that God is not stingy when he sows his seeds. As mentioned, we have a tendency to hear this parable and try to figure out which kind of soil we are.
Am I the path, where the birds come and eat the seed up? Am I the rocky ground, without much soil, no depth and the sun scorches and dries up? Am I full of thorns, choking the seeds? Or am I good soil, bringing forth grain?
I wonder if this is one of those multiple-choice questions where the answer is: “E: All of the above.” What if on any given day, we might be one way and on a different day another?
Catch me on a Monday and I am distracted, maybe I’ve just been in an argument, or I’ve just gotten some bad news, or the washing machine has overflowed just before I have to leave for work. In those moments, I am not fertile soil. Don’t look for grain coming from me then.
But I don’t have to stay that way. Jesus is going to sow the seeds of God’s Word and I might miss it the first time, but I can have better days and better moments, and be more open and be more fertile. And I might not always stay that way either, as much as I want to.
God’s willing to work with us. No matter what soil we are, he’s going to sow the seeds. But he wants us to get it. He wants us to be fruitful.
Matthew’s Gospel is known as the discipleship Gospel. The author wants us to understand what it means to follow Jesus, what the costs are, and what’s expected of us.
At the beginning of today’s reading, Jesus goes and sits beside the sea. That sounds nice, like something we can relate to living on the Eastern Shore. Then such big crowds gather around him that gets into a boat. The thing about being in a boat on the water, sound carries. He’s created his own amplification system.
And he tells the big crowds about the sower and the seed. And as he finishes his teaching he says, “let anyone with ears listen!” Knowing not everyone will understand.
The way today’s reading is put together, we jump from verse 9 to verse 18, where Jesus explains the parable. But the part we jumped over, is the disciples coming up to Jesus after he has been preaching to the crowds and they ask him why he speaks in parables.
So the second part of today’s reading is Jesus speaking directly to his disciples. No big crowds. And now he focuses on the soil. He asks the disciples to look in the mirror. He asks us to look in the mirror.
If through God’s Word, if through sowing these seeds, Jesus is bringing forth new life, if that’s his example to us, if that is what he is showing as the character of God, what does that ask of us?
He’s asking us to be open, to be receptive, to be good soil. And Jesus spells it out for us clearly. This means, “to hear the word and understand it, to bear fruit and yield, whether a hundredfold, sixty, or thirty.”
What does it mean to bear fruit here?
I want to go back to a couple weeks ago, to something Fr. Bill Ortt said: he said that wherever a believer is, wherever a disciple is, there is the kingdom of God.
As believers, as disciples, we bring the kingdom with us. Well, jeez, what does that mean? Here is another from Fr. Bill—and this is so helpful. Fr. Bill told us to think of it as KINGSHIP rather than kingdom. That we are closer to understanding when we think of it as a RELATIONSHIP, not a place.
To bear fruit, to carry that seed, that new life from God, sprouting in us, would be to have a different, deeper, relationship with God. To put God’s love at the center of who we are, how we live, what we do. To live differently than what we see going on in the world today.
This is not a matter of reducing the moral of the story to, we should all be better people. In fact, we might not want to try to reduce Jesus’s parables to simple morals anyway—they have a tendency to expand and confound our thinking and increase our wonder more than they do to clarify things.
Jesus is giving us a story about the Sower, (he calls it the parable of the sower, not the parable of the soil), about the word of God (the seed) creating new life where there was only soil. And maybe we don’t take enough notice in real life, watching seeds crack open, start to sprout, blossom, BLOOM. Have you ever watched that happen over the course of days, weeks, months in your own garden? I am always late getting vegetables in and right now my tomatoes are green and just taking shape on the vines. And I get excited every time I go water them. Do you get giddy and overjoyed at the very simplest things?
What about thinking about yourself that way, and your relationship with God. What if our hearts were full of gratitude for this new life that has been given to us, that has nothing to do with anything we’ve done?
How do we respond? Maybe we want to do our best to cultivate the soil of our hearts, of our lives, so that God’s Word can take root, can crack open, can bloom, and bear fruit? Maybe our thanks to God IS to bear fruit—to carry that seed, that new life, into who and how we are in the world.
No matter what kind of terrain I am at the moment, Jesus is sowing the seeds that offer me new life. What an incredible gift. What am I going to do with it? What are we going to do with it?
I want to leave you with the words of Debie Thomas, from her book “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories,” and what she wishes for the church, and what we might take from the Parable of the Sower—
“How I wish we were known for our absurd generosity. How I wish we were famous for being like the Sower, going out in joy, scattering seed before and behind us in the widest arcs our arms can make. How I wish the world could laugh at our lavishness instead of recoiling from our stinginess. How I wish the people in our lives could see a quiet, gentle confidence in us when we tend to the hard, rocky, thorny places in our communities, instead of finding us abrasive, judgmental, exacting, and insular. How I wish seeds of love, mercy, justice, humility, honor, and truthfulness would fall through our fingers in such appalling quantities that even the birds, the rocks, the thorns, and the shallow, sun-scorched corners of the world would burst forth into colorful, riotous life.”
Jesus has sown new life, God’s love, into the soil of our lives. What are we going to do with it?
Lead in: I just finished my second year of seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are going to school.June 17 and 18 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.
Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.
The Gospel reading for June 18 wasMatthew 9:25-10:23, where Jesus calls his 12 apostles and sends them out to further the work that he has been doing: curing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing lepers, and casting out demons, with warnings about what will happen to them.
“Send Us Out”
In January 2017, I had just started working at the church and I remember sitting down with Fr. Bill Ortt. It was time to start Bible studies and kick off The Alpha Course and he asked how I felt about everything. I said, “it’s daunting. And exciting.”
I was starting things I hadn’t done before. Anticipation and anxiety were in the water together. And all I could do was jump in.
Saying that, I can’t imagine what was going through the minds of the 12 disciples when Jesus calls them in today’s reading. So far in Matthew’s Gospel, they have seen Jesus teach, heal, and cure diseases; they have heard him give his Sermon on the Mount. They watched Jesus make a leper clean and were afraid for their lives on a boat as he commanded a storm to stop. When they got off the boat, he drove demons out of man everyone was afraid of; and we heard last week how he cured a woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years and then he raised a leader from the synagogue’s daughter from the dead.
Now he calls the 12 together and says, okay, your turn. Now you do it. “Proclaim the good news, the kingdom of heaven has come near, cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” Wow. No nerves or pressure there.
The disciples have been riding the bus that Jesus was driving, but he was making all the stops and doing all the work. They were just along for the ride. They probably didn’t realize what “Follow me” entailed.
Let’s look at today’s text just before Jesus sends them out to see what prompts him to do this. He’s going about to all the cities and all the villages teaching and proclaiming the good news and curing every disease.
And then Matthew tells us: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore, ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” And Jesus calls his 12.
The time is now. The harvest is ready. People are lost, hurting, sick. And Jesus needs those he has called to help him, to be the laborers.
This is the first time in Matthew’s Gospel that he refers to them as “apostles,” which means those who are sent out.
What are they sent out to do? Help people. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. Do what Jesus has been doing. They are to share in and further his calling, his mission, under his authority. Go to where people are hurting. Care for them, give them hope. The things you do when you love someone.
As Matthew was making the point to get these things across to his readers then, they are still intended to speak to us now. Michael Green was an international evangelist, pastor, and author. In his book, “The Message of Matthew,” he gives us a way of thinking about Jesus’s mission charge to the apostles by summarizing it in five words: see, care, pray, receive, go.
SEE: “When Jesus SAW the crowds”—this is first and foremost, the apostles had to SEE the needs of those who were suffering or in trouble. We need to do the same.
CARE: “When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them.” Green points out that the word Matthew used for having compassion means “he was moved in his guts,” he was stirred deep inside. For the first apostles, or for us, when we see people suffering, we are called to care deeply.
PRAY: “Ask the Lord of the harvest to send workers into his harvest.” We are not the Lord of the harvest, that’s God, and we need to ask for his help and guidance. Stay connected to Him.
RECEIVE: And what Green says here is that the apostles, and we, need to receive training from Jesus, which they do both in watching him, in being with him, and in being sent out by him; and that they also need to receive authority. “It will not be you speaking but the Spirit of the Father speaking through you.” We need to allow ourselves to be open to, and filled with God’s Spirit. It’s not about us, it is about what God can do through us.
GO: Jesus commands, “Go,” and “As you go”… that’s the thing about being sent out. They and we actually have to go out. In preparing them for what’s to come, Jesus doesn’t lecture them about weekly church attendance. He sends them out and warns them that it is going to be dangerous.
Jesus and apostles. Fresco in Cappadocia
Jesus spends some time on this warning. He goes over the rough things that are on the horizon for the apostles. It’s going to be difficult, and it is going to be costly. “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”
Debie Thomas in her book, “Into the Mess,” says when it comes to faith, “Discomfort is what success looks like.”
“If our overriding priority as Christians is to secure our own comfort, then we cannot follow Jesus. The discipleship Jesus describes will disorient and disrupt us. It will make us the neighborhood weirdos. It will shake things up in our families, our friendship circles, our churches, our communities.”
Caring is costly. As a society now, we are flooded with images and stories of worldwide suffering, violence, sickness—and what is the most common response? Change the channel. Close the laptop. Don’t think about it. Or better yet these days, find someone or a group of people who don’t agree with us and blame them. If we make it a point to care for the marginalized and cast out, we risk becoming marginalized or cast out ourselves. Jesus asks us to step out and take that risk.
When we care about those around us, we open ourselves to getting hurt. When we open our heart to love someone, sooner or later, pain is a part of that love. Love in this life also has loss lingering behind it.
The apostle Paul has a sense of that loss, of that cost, when he writes today’s reading from Romans. He finds something in this suffering:
“We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:2-5)
Jesus didn’t send the apostles out alone. He was with them. He cared about them. And he doesn’t send us out alone. He cares about us. And when we go through the pain and suffering that loving God and each other can bring, Jesus shows us that suffering can point ultimately to hope, and hope in God does not disappoint us.
If we are doing the work that God has given us to do, loving like Jesus, in a world that pushes back against it, we are going to struggle. I will tell you something that is amazing to me: we have so many people in our church community, who have used the struggles, the suffering, the loss they have experienced as a launching point either for ministries that they have helped start, or who are showing up for people in new and deeper ways because of what they have been through. They don’t want others to go through the same struggles alone.
That’s part of what being sent out looks like. Seeing, Caring, Praying, Receiving, Going.
A number of years go in Fr. Bill’s 30-week Kerygma Class, he drew two circles on a white board, one that had arrows pointing inward, and one with arrows pointing out. He talked about the circles as churches, inward facing and outward facing, and asked which one looked more like Jesus’s idea of love and caring? Barbara Coleman, now the Reverend Barbara, put her hands on top of her head with her fingers facing up to show the arrows facing out. And that has been her apostolic antler reminder ever since. We don’t see Barbara as much here anymore because she discerned a call to become a Deacon. She was ordained here in this church in October 2020, and now serves multiple parishes in Dorchester County, and heads up the food pantry. She calls herself the “Deacon of Dorchester.” She’s been sent out.
“Apostolic Antlers” from Rev. Barbara, Fr. Bill, and our Kerygma Class
Another part of today’s reading that keeps stirring me up is how the apostles learned from Jesus. He didn’t ask them to do anything he wasn’t already doing. Beyond his teaching, I bet they learned as much from watching him, from being around him, and from trying to do what he did.
It’s Father’s Day weekend. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads here. I’m convinced that we learn more from watching our fathers, our parents, and who they are, than from anything they might tell us. At least I hope that is the case, as neither of my daughters seem to listen to anything I say… The story about watching who someone is that that comes to my heart happened leading up to Halloween many years ago. So you get a quick Halloween story in June. Sorry, I’ve got the microphone.
From the late 1970s to the mid-80s, Easton had an annual haunted house that was unparalleled and unrivaled. In terms of scariness, creativity, and ingenuity, Disney World fell short of the haunted houses that the Easton Kiwanis Club put on. My father was a part of the Kiwanis Club and our whole family jumped into helping, for a good chunk of September and all of October each year.
They moved from place to place—from an old house on Dutchman’s Lane, to the old Idlewild Elementary School, when it was left empty in Idlewild Park. There were spot-built hydraulic floors, an illusion where a man changed into a werewolf on stage; swinging rope bridges, chainsaws, and even a flamethrower. The last two years of the haunted house, it was on a property in the woods off Manadier Road, at the end of Dutchman’s Lane. People had to park in front of what is now Auto Zone on Dover Road, and ride buses to the haunted woods.
The last year they held it, my friends and I as teenagers were given our own area along the wooded trail, a rundown old farm building, to create our scene to scare people. It was right next to where the buses pulled in.
One night a crowd got off the buses, a big crowd, most were in their 20s, and after riding the buses out there to this dark, deserted woods, they were scared, freaked out, didn’t want to go in and started screaming and shoving, not listening to anyone—it was the beginning of a riot. No one could calm them down and things were elevating past a boiling point.
From where I was standing, I could see my Dad come out of the woods, walk right up to the guys in the front of the crowd, who no one wanted any part of dealing with, and he stepped right into the mess, right where someone was needed. He diffused the whole situation. The entire crowd calmed down, made peace, and the evening, and the show, went on.
My Dad, 1980s era
That night was more than 35 years ago and I have never forgotten it, watching my dad help restore order out of short-fused chaos. Talking about it later, he said, “I have no idea what I would have done if it turned violent.” He didn’t think, he acted—not just sent out, he seemed shot out, going to where the critical need was. There have been times when I have called on his example in chaotic situations and tried to live into that, diffusing things, and trying to bring peace.
God connects us to people we can learn from; we are always being shaped.
I have to imagine that as Peter, John, and Matthew the tax collector were sent out, and their ministries expanded, that they had their own experiences of watching and learning from Jesus as he healed, cared, loved, and brought peace. They could call on their experiences of watching him. And as we read and discuss the stories of Jesus in the Gospels, we learn how to model ourselves after him. What would Jesus see? What would he care about? How would he love? Who would he send?
How about us? Are we ready to see, care, pray, receive, and go?
Lead in: I am in my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are going to school. February 11-12 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.
Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.
The Gospel reading for February 12 was a rough one–Matthew 5:21-37, part of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus tells his disciples that not committing murder or adultery aren’t enough, you can’t hold onto anger or lust, or you are in the same shape, then moves into divorce and lying.
“Love Over Law”
There is a quote that comes to mind when I read this part of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. It’s by Lao Tzu, a Chinese mystic philosopher. He says:
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
What begin as our thoughts, form who we become; and inform our destiny.
Our thoughts matter. Our words matter. Our actions matter. From their smallest beginnings, they can become our lives without us realizing it.
Let’s remember what Jesus said in last week’s reading, the passage just before today’s Gospel. Jesus said, “Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill… not one letter will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”
He continues on to say not to break the least of the commandments or teach others to do the same, and that your righteousness needs to EXCEED that of the scribes and the pharisees.
Your righteousness needs to EXCEED the the letter of the law.
Some of the laws that Jesus cites in today’s reading are about actions: “You shall not murder,” “You shall not commit adultery,” and then he brings in divorce and lying. These are all actions, things that people do.
Jesus is trying to head these things off at the pass before they get anywhere close to being actions. Work with them when they are still thoughts.
Since Jesus has gone there, let’s think about it in a hypothetical situation with vengeance and anger. If someone has wronged you in the worst way, so much so that you decide you are going to take action: you are seething, you get into your car, you drive to where they are, you walk up to the door.
If the law is “thou shalt not commit murder”—where is the easiest place to stop that from happening? It’s not when you get to the house looking for revenge. It’s before you even get into the car. Once you’ve started the process, you are moving down a path that the further you get, the harder it is to turn back.
Jesus is telling his disciples not to go down that path.
Murder is obviously an extreme case. Jesus dials it back to anger: if you are angry with a brother or sister or if they have something against you—and here he says something remarkable for those of us sitting in church—before you go to church, reconcile yourself with your brother or sister. Then come to church.
Why would he say that? How is that a good church growth strategy?
Jesus is trying to build a community founded on love and caring for each other. If you’ve got a bunch of people worshipping together who have grudges against each other, or who come to have real issues with each other, that’s not a loving community.
Fr. Bill pointed out last week that in relaying this teaching and these stories that Jesus is telling his disciples, Matthew is passing along those instructions to his readers and ultimately intending it for us as disciples today. Jesus’ teaching is also meant for us today.
Let’s think about things in terms of us today. I think we all have friends who aren’t church-goers, some who maybe used to be, and others who simply don’t go to church and when they tell you why, it is because they know people who go to church and then they see how they live their lives outside church, and they want nothing to do with that kind of hypocrisy. They see them out in the community, how they treat people, the masks they wear, the things they do.
Look again at what Jesus is saying: if you have issues with someone, work it out, then come to church. Have your heart in the right place and your lives in the right place when you are here. Our relationships with each other are integral to who the church is. Jesus is holding us to a higher standard.
We have to see our relationships with each other as part of our Christian calling.
Jesus is asking his disciples, and us, to be accountable. Both to God and to each other.
My grandfather, my mom’s father, lived to be 92. He was a recovering alcoholic and spent the last 56 years of his life sober. He was a director of Tuerk House in Baltimore and a program director for the National Council on Alcoholism. He ultimately made his living and his life about helping people who wanted to get sober.
He lived in Baltimore and Towson, before spending the last years of his life in Easton. When he and my grandmother moved here, one of the first things he did was to find out when and where the AA meetings were, so he could connect with people.
William Robert (Bob) Miller
We had a memorial service for him at Londonderry, where they lived, and people who knew him from AA came from Baltimore to be there and to speak. The Baltimore Sun newspaper wrote two stories about him after he passed.
He was extroverted, loved to talk and tell stories, and he was compassionate and an incredible listener. He was considered a rock for those battling alcoholism who were trying to reclaim their lives.
A saying that became his mantra was: “I don’t care whether an alcoholic came from Yale or jail or Park Avenue or park bench, I’m here to help.”
I will also always remember someone asking him if once you were an alcoholic, you could ever not be an alcoholic again, to which he said, “You can turn a cucumber into a pickle, but you can’t turn a pickle back into a cucumber.”
I bring my grandfather up because the 12 steps of AA became a way of life for him. And I want to look for a minute at a few of the steps and think about them in terms of accountability and in terms of how Jesus is asking his disciples to think and live. Here are a few of the steps in the program:
Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings.
Make a list of all persons we have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.
Make direct amends to such people wherever possible.
Continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong promptly admit it.
Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
That sounds a lot like what Jesus is asking of his disciples.
There is law and then there is lifestyle. The 12 steps in AA are a way for people to live differently, to be accountable, and to stay humble.
Jesus is asking his disciples, and us, to live differently, to be accountable, and to stay humble.
It’s a way of life, not just about following the law.
We’re getting towards the end of our Bible study of Romans, which started in the fall. I won’t pull you too far into Romans, but one of the points that Paul makes repeatedly is that the law is not sufficient for salvation.
The law is prescriptive: it tells you what to do and what not to do, but by itself, it doesn’t change us.
Jesus Christ is transformative, he takes us from being stuck in the flesh, in sin, to being in Christ, in the Spirit, to becoming new creations.
Paul points out where we are stuck in today’s reading from Corinthians:
“I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you still are not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?”
The law is the baby food. It’s meant to get us to the next thing. If we are stuck on the law, in jealousy and arguing, we’re not there yet.
Let’s leave the law for a minute. Let’s talk about anger.
For me, road rage is a hang up, it’s a real thing. When I am driving other people can lose their humanity quickly for me and I can lose mine. And I don’t mean in a run- people-off-the-road or get-out-of-the-car-and-start-a-fight way. I mean in a being overtaken by anger-way; a not being the person I should be-way.
I commuted from Easton to Washington, DC, and back for work for more than four years. It was a 70-mile commute, one way, which included Route 295 into DC. I mostly listened to sports radio or loud, obnoxious music, both of which helped. But I frequently felt my blood boil, my heart rate ramp up, and it wasn’t a good thing. And then when I got home in the evening, I wasn’t a horrible person or a terrible father, but I wasn’t fully present.
Some of that anger, some of that stress came in the house with me and kept me from connecting the way I should have. Jesus is warning us against this happening, he is trying to keep us from that kind of disconnect.
My life fell apart while I was making that commute. And in our reading today, Jesus warns us about divorce. He says don’t go there.
The law says, “whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.” No big deal. And that’s where we are in society today. We treat marriage and divorce as if it is no big deal, almost as if divorce were expected.
Going through a divorce tore my heart to pieces. Nicky Gumbel, the pioneer of the Alpha Course, compares marriage to gluing together corrugated cardboard… and he says when you try to pull the cardboard apart, it destroys both pieces in the process.
That’s an accurate metaphor in my book. When I hear that someone is separating or going through a divorce, my heart breaks for them. It’s not something that is casual or that is meant to be casual.
It is not as simple, and shouldn’t be, as divorce papers, and divorce parties to celebrate. It’s something to mourn. It’s a death.
And that is where some of us end up, with the life that we had ending.
Thankfully, God doesn’t leave us at death. Jesus will come to know something about new life, after death. And in my experience, in giving divorce the gravity it can have in our lives, in mourning it and working through it as a death, new and unexpected life can come out of it. We need to walk through that and help others through it. That’s been part of my story and I am grateful for new life.
New life is what Jesus wanted for his disciples. It is what he wants for us. Life to the fullest.
The commandments, the laws, are not meant to make us miserable or keep us from that life. They aren’t meant to be spoilsports to take away the fun stuff. They were put in place to be guidelines for how to live in a community together without hurting each other, intentionally or unintentionally.
Murder, adultery, lying, coveting—none of these things help us love our neighbor better. Quite the opposite. And our thoughts, words, and actions can influence our lives in ways that move us in those directions.
Idols and false gods don’t bring us closer to God, they put things between us and God.
And when you add all these behaviors up and stir them up in a pot, you get what we see when we look around the world today—a world that is lost, people who are suffering from being estranged from God and each other; people who feel alone and confused.
The commandments and laws are already there. They haven’t changed or fixed things by their existence.
So what do we do? How do we fix this? We have to live differently. Righteousness has to let go of the law and point to God’s will and love.
To help us see a different way to live, a better way to live, I am going to borrow from a couple of our small groups—one of which looks ahead in Matthew’s Gospel just a bit.
Matthew Chapter 7, Verses 13 and 14 says:
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life and there are few who find it.”
We have a men’s study that just began Fr. Gregory Boyle’s book, “Tattoos on the Heart,” about his experience working with Los Angeles gang members. They have an incredible ministry and they see ex-gang members transformed and leading new lives, by virtue of finding a community that loves and supports them and who are there for them.
“Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel says, ‘How narrow is the gate that leads to life?’ Mistakenly, I think we’ve come to believe that this is about restriction. The way is narrow. But it really wants us to see that narrowness IS the way.
“… Our choice is not to focus on the narrow, but to narrow our focus. The gate that leads to life is not about restriction at all. It is about an entry into the expansive. There is a vastness in knowing you’re a son or daughter worth having. We see our plentitude in God’s own expansive view of us.”
And we take that in, God’s view of us. Boyle says we marinate in it.
God is vast and his love for us is expansive. But we can’t marinate in that, we can’t feel that, if we are scattered. The pharisees and scribes Jesus says we need to be more righteous than were obsessed with the law. Do you know how many laws are listed in the Old Testament? 613. Try to keep all those straight and see how narrow you feel.
We have to narrow our focus onto God’s love. If that’s what we focus on, that we are loved by God; if that’s what we take into our hearts and our lives, that we are beloved sons and daughters, ALL OF US, how does that make us feel and how does that make us want to treat each other?
If we narrow our focus to love, what does that look like?
You know who knows what that looks like? Paul knows. This coming week in our Romans study, we’ll be discussing Romans Chapter 12. Here is what Paul says in verses 9 through 16:
“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly…”
And he finishes chapter 12 saying, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
THAT’S NOT LAW, IT’S LOVE.
In his Sermon the Mount, which we are working through bit by bit each week, Jesus lays a lot in front of us. We get the blessings of the Beatitudes, we are reminded that we are salt and light, and today we get this over-the-top teaching about being more righteous than the law. Something we can never live up to or fully into.
Paul goes to a similar place in his letters—we need a Venn diagram and flow charts to get through Romans.
It’s a lot to learn and it’s hard to live.
But they both point us to the same place. To the power of God’s love. To the transformative, self-sacrificing love Jesus models for us and gives to us. To the grace that is our gift when we say yes to it.
We are God’s beloved. All of us. He wants us to know that and to live that way, with each other.
We don’t need laws to change us, we need love.
And when we have love, the laws become fulfilled, because our hearts are already far beyond them.
Our hearts are full of God’s love. And we treat each other that way.
This week, I was asked to lead our Wednesday morning healing prayer service. It’s a small, wonderful, heartfelt and Spirit-led service, which is held every Wednesday at 10:00am. The Gospel reading for the morning was Matthew 22:34-40, which is Jesus answering the question, which is the greatest commandment. I’m including the reading below and then the homily I gave in response to it:
Matthew 22:34-40 NRSV
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
“Let Love Become a Reality”
I love when people asked Jesus questions. Depending on who was asking, they didn’t always love his responses, or the questions he asked back to them.
But I think Jesus also had in mind the spirit in which the questions were asked. Thinking of John’s Gospel—both Nikodemus and the woman at the well were trying to understand. And Jesus encouraged them. Here and elsewhere, when the Pharisees, Sadducees, and lawyers asked questions, it was often to try to trip him up, to trick him into saying the wrong thing so they could discredit him or have him arrested.
Here we have an expert in the law asking him which commandment is the greatest?
So Jesus goes to Scripture, he pulls from Deuteronomy 6:5, part of the Shema, the creed of Judaism, for “Love the Lord your God,” and to Leviticus 19:18 for “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
On these two commandments, hang all the Law and the Prophets. He’s given a perfect legal answer. And he’s done something even more to confound the law expert.
Michael Green in his book “The Message of Matthew,” points out that “For people who, like this expert in the law, were strong on ethics and weak on relationships, this strongly relational teaching was a revealing mirror of the heart.”
Strong on ethics, weak on relationships. A mirror of the heart. When I think about a lot of people today—we are strong on ideas, maybe strong on convictions, but not so great on relationships. We want to label people as different from us and say therefore they are wrong. Our tendency is to distance ourselves rather than drawing closer, rather than trying to understand or to love.
When we think of God and our neighbors in terms of relationships, in terms of beings who we are called to love, we have to get off of our high horses. If we try to love God with everything we have, we also have to love his creation, and the people he created.
Green writes:
“If there is real love for God, there will inevitably be real love for neighbor; God’s overflowing love is infectious. The criterion of whether love for God is real is whether or not it is reflected in our relationships with others. And it will not do to say, as many do, ‘I don’t do any harm to anyone.’ That is not only negative, but it neglects the first and great commandment, to put God as number one in our lives. With God first and neighbor second, all else in the law is commentary.”
To make a go at loving, we have to have softer hearts, our hearts need to be renewed—we can’t just be following orders (the law).
How do we do this? It doesn’t happen all at once. It takes time.
Our friend and brother John Coleman points out that as a police officer, he responds differently to situations today than he did 25 years ago. He always did his job and responded according to law, but now his first response is based much more in love and understanding, then when he was newer at the job. He credits both God and time with working on him.
I can tell you from my own experience that I think and feel and respond differently now to things than I did five years ago. And that has been five years of studying Scripture, of prayer and worship, of spiritual friendships and encouragement. When we use the term Christian formation, we are hoping, working to be formed in a more Christ-like way.
I hope I continue to grow and learn and improve how I love God and love my neighbor.
Reflecting on this passage in Matthew, N.T. Wright (in his book “Matthew for Everyone”) says:
“The heart doesn’t seem to get renewed all in one go. Many, many bits of darkness and impurity still lurk in its depths, and sometimes take a lot of work, prayer, and counsel to dig out and replace with the love which we all agree should really be there.”
I’m thinking of Paul writing in Romans where he says, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate.” I think we all can relate to Paul’s dilemma sometimes.
Given the fact that we are standing here together at a healing service on Wednesday morning, I think we all know it is right and a good thing to love God and love our neighbor. We can agree both that that is what we are supposed to do and that it is what we are commanded to do.
But it has to be more than a command, it has to be more than instructions to follow.
Wright says:
Commandments “come into their own when they are seen not as orders to be obeyed in our own strength, but as invitations and promises to a new way of life in which, bit by bit, hatred and pride can be left behind and love can become a reality.”
There it is: an invitation, a promise to a new way of life where we leave behind hatred and pride and love becomes our reality. Let’s make that our prayer, let’s make that our guiding star.
If we go back to the scene, this encounter that Matthew gives us: Jesus is answering the question posed to him by a legal expert, and he gives a brilliant answer.
If we love God with all our heart, mind, and soul—we’re not going to put idols above him, we’re not going to have other gods before him, we’re not going to take his name in vain, and on down the list.
And if we truly love our neighbor as ourselves, that should take care of murder, stealing, coveting, adultery, bearing false witness.
Jesus gives us the Cliff Notes, the summary, the thing we can memorize or a cheat sheet we can put in our pockets and refer to when we need it—you know, for when we don’t have our Bibles with us or don’t have the time to look up the answers about the law.
But it’s so much more than that. It can be a basis for a new way of life, a better way of life.
The poet Pablo Neruda wrote in his love sonnets:
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
What if we think about knowing and loving God that intimately. What if we have God’s love so much in our hearts and in our lives that we become that love when we think, when we feel, when we pray, and when we act. What if we know no other way of loving, than as God loves.
What if it didn’t matter that love was a commandment, because love was simply our reality.
Lead in: I am in my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are in seminary. December 10-11 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.
Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.
The Gospel reading for December 11 was Matthew 11:2-11, where John the Baptist sends followers to ask Jesus if he is the one who is to come, or are they to wait for another? And Jesus’s answer.
“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
That’s the question we’re going to kick around, the one John has his disciples ask Jesus.
John the Baptist didn’t care what other people thought. He wore strange clothes, ate strange food, blasted the religious people, and attended to business in the wilderness. And he was faithful—he did what he was called to do and he had crowds following him.
And as he was called to do, he pointed to Jesus as the one who was to come—the one he wasn’t fit to carry the sandals of.
John is in the New Testament Hall of Fame—each of the four Gospels has him playing a pivotal role in helping Jesus launch his ministry. And it was John the Baptist’s death that marked the beginning of Jesus’s time teaching and healing and moving toward his death and resurrection.
And this same John, while in prison, sends a question to Jesus: are you the guy or are we supposed to wait for someone else?
Brutal, right? Disheartening. Not exactly a vote of confidence from your friend and mentor.
Let’s think about it from John’s perspective: he’s in prison. He will end up beheaded. The Jewish people’s position hasn’t been improved.
The Jewish people had this idea that the Messiah—the anointed one—will arrive on the scene, hand out justice, military-style, free Israel, put them back on top in power, and they will all be vindicated with a great, big victory to show the world they were right.
That’s what they’re waiting for. Hey Jesus, are you this guy? Or are we waiting for someone else?
Notice how Jesus answers him: he doesn’t say, “Yes, I’m the guy.”
He tells John’s disciples to “Go and tell John what you hear and see:
The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
Those with a skin disease are cleansed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them.”
Jesus points to his actions as his answer.
Is Jesus the one who was and is to come? Yes. He was showing it then and we’ve seen the movement that has swept around the world in the 2,000-plus years since. But he wasn’t doing what John, or what the Jewish people, or what the world expected.
I wonder if that is still the case. If we are still largely missing what Jesus was doing and what he came to do.
How many people have heard some form of the expression, “Wait til your father gets home…” Or, “when your father gets home…” That’s not really meant as a good thing, right? It’s more along the lines of—here come the consequences of your actions.
Think about that over the course of Biblical history, especially for those who have been singled out, chosen as examples, held up by God as those to look to. We see a lot of, “Wait til the Messiah gets here. Then you’re gonna get it. Then you’ll be sorry.”
Today it isn’t hard to look around and see people doing a lot of the same posturing: look at how you’re acting; look at what a terrible place the world is becoming. Wait til God gets here. Wait til Jesus comes back. Then you’re going to get it.
Don’t make God angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.
God is not the Incredible Hulk. He didn’t give us free will and the capacity to love—he didn’t fill us with wonder and awe and compassion, just to smash us when we mess up or get things wrong.
God wants us to change. He wants to help us. He has bigger and better ideas in mind.
If God is Love, what does a big military victory and putting those who were oppressed on top of their oppressors—what does that do to further love in the world? What does that do to further the work that we know Jesus came to do? How does that put things back right?
We have this idea of righteousness, on our terms, not on God’s terms.
Jesus was working out righteousness and salvation in accordance with the will of his Father. Before he gets to his death and resurrection, he is giving us a model for how we can do the same.
ARE YOU THE ONE OR ARE WE TO WAIT FOR SOMEONE ELSE?
“Go and tell John what you hear and see:
The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
Those with a skin disease are cleansed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them”
Peru Mission Trip 2019
We are not Jesus. We can’t perform the miracles that we read about him doing throughout the Gospels. But those are things that God is calling righteous, that God is saying are in synch with His will.
If we want to know who God is and how he wants us to act, we need to look at Jesus.
And Jesus doesn’t want us to throw up our hands and say we’re not you, we can’t do it. He makes it clear that he gives us the Holy Spirit so we can continue the work that he began.
How much of our energy, how much of our attention, how much of our creativity, how much of our resources are being put towards this kind of work?
Who are we waiting for? Who will we follow?
I wonder how we would feel if we reframed John’s question for Jesus and pointed the finger at ourselves:
Are WE the ones Jesus has asked to continue his work or is He to wait for someone else?
That question should make us look in the mirror.
Here’s the thing about John: this isn’t a knock on him at all. He did his job well. He lived his life the right way and he spread the message he was given.
When Jesus starts to speak to the crowds he says John is a prophet and more than a prophet.
“To those born of women, no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist… He is the one about whom it is written:
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, Who will prepare the way before you.’
What was John’s message? REPENT. TURN AROUND.
Don’t get caught up in all the things the world is throwing at us and telling us are important. Playing it forward: don’t make violence the answer. Don’t make hate the way we live.
To a people who have lost their way, to a people who are in a spiritual wilderness, John is saying to stop. Don’t keep doing the same things. Turn around. Be different. The kingdom of heaven is near.
It’s not too late to change.
Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, in chapter 4, after Jesus is baptized by John and then tested/formed in his own wilderness experience, Jesus hears that John was arrested. And as he begins his ministry, the message that Jesus proclaims is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”
They were both telling the people, and us, the same thing. The difference is that Jesus was bringing the kingdom with him. He knew the work he needed to do to help bring it about. And he showed us the work we need to do to keep it going.
John was TELLING us to live differently, Jesus was SHOWING us how to live.
Think about the list of things that Jesus wanted John to know about. What do they all have in common?
Jesus cared for others. He healed, he fed, he taught, he brought good news. That was how he was working to bring the kingdom of heaven near.
When we care for others, we are continuing Jesus’s work.
Marsha Allen, whose been a part of our Tuesday Bible study for years always asks one of the best questions: What am I supposed to do with all this? How am I supposed to live?
So let’s ask ourselves that question: what would that look like to continue Jesus’s work here in our community?
In 2009, what we now know as the Talbot Interfaith Shelter began as a temporary shelter in our Parish Hall. It would be at Christ Church for a period of time and then it would move to another location and this continued until 2014 when they opened their first and current location at Easton’s Promise. Today they have two facilities, and their program for helping their residents’ get back on their feet is called the S4 Program—shelter, stability, support, success. They don’t just give people shelter, they help them get back their lives back—they give them hope.
A number of years ago, volunteering at the shelter one evening at just this time of year, I met a father and son there—the son was in elementary school. Their wife/mother died from cancer, but not before medical expenses they couldn’t keep up with left them homeless.
I can remember everyone had gone upstairs to bed and a few minutes later the boy came back down the stairs and was standing in the living room staring at the Christmas Tree. When we asked if we was okay, if he needed anything, he said, “No, I just like looking at the tree.”
His dad gave an incredible testimonial about how the shelter helped them, how much being there meant to them. Executive Director Julie Lowe and her team BRING GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR.
CarePacks of Talbot County began when Emily Moody, who was a social worker at Easton Elementary, noticed how many kids were going home on the weekends without healthy food to eat. She and Megan Cook began an effort that is now at place in every school in Talbot County, where packages of food are sent home every weekend to make sure the kids who depend on free breakfast and lunch at school can eat on the weekends. And once a month on the fourth Friday, people can go to CarePacks to pick up food for whole families. This kind of program is also in place in Caroline County and it being put in place throughout the Eastern Shore. THE HUNGRY ARE BEING FED.
Global Vision 2020 is an international non-profit organization, founded here in Easton by Kevin White. They go around the world, diagnose sight problems, and are able give glasses, on the spot, to people in the poorest countries. There are people who literally can’t see and that’s how they experience life. And with inexpensive glasses given to them then and there, their lives are changed.
When our Mission Trip goes to Peru next summer, helping give people sight through Global Vision will be among the work that Kelsey Spiker and the team will be doing. THE BLIND ARE RECEIVING SIGHT.
None of these things are miracles in the sense that we see in Scripture. But each of these organizations are very clearly continuing the work that Jesus started and gave us as a model of working toward the kingdom of heaven.
The reason I mention these particular groups is: not only are they all local, they were all begun by people who were parishioners here at Christ Church. And they have all received either outreach funding and/or volunteer support from the church over the years.
There are so many more examples in our community, all around us, which many of you support and volunteer for, and that need your help.
This is a time of year when people get stressed. Heating and electric bills go up, it’s colder outside for those without a place to stay; in many cases, parents just want to give their kids a good Christmas, but they are stretched too far. The Advent Angel gifts around the altar are another example of ways to help people in the community who are in need.
Here’s the thing though. In just the last 20 years at Christ Church, many new ministries have been started and borne fruit, and they have made a difference in people’s lives.
We don’t know what the next ministries are going to be looking out five, 10, 20 years. But recent history says that they will come from YOU—the vision, the work, the love, the hope will be raised up from people sitting right here who are open to the work of the Holy Spirit and who seek to follow and continue the work that Jesus began.
Advent is a season where we wait with hope. Where we listen for how we can help. Where we see and tell people about the work Jesus was doing, the work he gave as an answer to John.
The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
The sick are healed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them
Think about those things. Think about caring for others. And at the end of the service when we say together “and now send us out to do the work you have given us to do,” let these words sink in and mean something.
This is the season where we say,
with our hearts and our minds and our actions
that Jesus was and is the one to come, and the one we give our lives to follow.
I am rarely without a notebook and pen. It would be fair for me to wear a sign on my back that says, “Will stop to write.” Mostly because otherwise I will forget. I will stop my longboard if a compelling thought jumps into my mind. And I frequently sit along a shoreline, in the woods, on a bench or wherever to take notes.
When it comes to church, for the readings and the sermon, I often just have pen and paper at the ready.
These are notes and thoughts after sermons and discussion last weekend at Christ Church Easton.
Last weekend’s lectionary readings were Isaiah 11:1-10 (The Peaceful Kingdom) and Matthew 3:1-12 (The Proclamation of John the Baptist). They will both speak to you if you let them.
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
Isaiah 11:1-3
On our Sunday morning Zoom discussion, Fr. Bill Ortt unpacked the Isaiah reading.
Wisdom happens in the heart and soul. Understanding takes place in the mind.
Fr. Bill Ortt
That’s one to sit with. We comprehend things with our mind, but when something sinks into our soul, it changes us.
And as we got talking about how to take “the fear of the Lord,” Fr. Bill talked about the ocean–how it deserves reverence and respect; how it leaves us humbled and in awe when we think about its size and power.
My mind went to the stars. When I stare at a clear night sky and try to think about the distance and time that is between us and God’s artwork across the cosmos; if I see a shooting star or the recent eclipse, my sense of awe and wonder is beyond stoked.
In verses 6-10, Isaiah goes on to describe what the coming peaceful kingdom might be like:
The wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion will feed together, and a little child shall lead them. 7 The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. 9 They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
This whole section is filled with hope for a people that need it. Maybe with what the world we live in feels like, looking forward with hope for a time to come might do us some good.
In Matthew’s Gospel, John the Baptist appears in the wilderness. He looks crazy, wearing camel-hair clothing and a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey. He tells people to change their lives, to live differently.
The kind of wilderness they talk about in the Bible is not a place we want to be. Wilderness experiences are those times we feel alone, lost, stripped down, exhausted, confused.
We talked about the need for recognizing those times in the wilderness, those times of desperation.
“Sometimes we go into the wilderness, but sometimes the wilderness comes to us.”
That was a comment made in our Zoom discussion. There is a lot of truth to that. Being aware of the wilderness, even if we don’t feel that’s where we are, can be a saving grace.
Wilderness changes us. It can make us wiser. It can help us understand what other people are going through. It can wake up our compassion. When we come out of the wilderness renewed, we want to be people who help others who are struggling to make it through.
Towards the end of Fr. Bill’s sermon in the church on Sunday morning, he tied it together:
“We need to know what it means to be people who have been healed, forgiven, and renewed.”
Lead in: I am about to begin my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are in seminary. August 13-14 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.
Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.
The Gospel reading for August 14 was Luke 12:49-56, which begins with Jesus saying “I have come to cast fire upon the earth and how I wish it were already ablaze!” and then gets more confusing from there.
For my last two preaching weekends, I have had demoniacs and fire-casting Jesus, both of which ask us to get our thinking caps on. The upside to getting the more obscure or confusing Gospel passages is that I generally have a lot of room to work with. We’re all kind of left scratching our heads and wondering what Jesus, and Luke, are talking about.
I think it is safe to say that the disciples were doing the same thing. I can imagine them looking back and forth to each other going, “I have no idea what he is talking about…”
And that is a theme throughout the Gospels: Jesus delivering a message that people didn’t understand or weren’t ready for. Or in some cases, that people didn’t want to hear.
One of the things we find Jesus talking about repeatedly is the way the world is…and the way the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God is. And he wants to help us bring about the Kingdom of Heaven. Which is not how things were, and not how they in the world now. But they could be.
Jesus was not one for the status quo. He didn’t want things to just keep going the way they were. He came to be different and to show us how to be different, and how to live differently.
Thinking about Jesus’s strange message in today’s Gospel, I thought it might be helpful to point out a few things that Jesus IS NOT KNOWN TO HAVE SAID.
Here we go:
Jesus never said, “It’s all good.”
Jesus never said, “You do you.”
Jesus never said, “As long as you don’t hurt anyone.”
And Jesus never said, “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
Jesus followed more in the sandals (not shoes) of John the Baptist, who said, “Repent.” Turn around. Stop doing what you are doing and live differently.
It’s important to put today’s message in context of Luke’s Gospel and the passages that are going on around it.
Over the last couple weeks, we’ve heard Father Charlie Barton distill the preceding Gospel messages to a few key phrases:
“Be rich toward God—don’t make your life about material things or treasures.”
And “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
“The simplest rule of thumb for each of us to ask, ‘Where do we spend our time and where do we spend our money?’ That’s where our treasure is, we can be sure. The focus of your time and money will tell you what your God is and what is important in your life. As others have wisely said, your checkbook and your calendar reveal your true belief system.”
Where we focus, what we value most, that will determine who we become and how we act in the world. So focus on God. Don’t focus on the things of this world, but on what Jesus has been telling us is more important. Things like caring for the poor and the sick, lifting each other up, loving God and our neighbor.
So when Jesus says, “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze”—he is talking about the way the world was, those who are storing up earthly treasures, those who are focused on power and not on love.
Burn down the old ways, Jesus is offering something new.
“Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” And what happened to the people of Israel who decided to follow Jesus: division.
Even in and among households. If you are living in the old house and can’t picture what the new one looks like yet, you might not be ready to burn what you’ve got. Or maybe you think this guy is full of nonsense, you have no desire to do what he says or follow where he leads. Some followed, some didn’t. And households became divided.
Well, it’s a good thing we don’t have divided households now [raised eyebrow, pulls at collar] Glad they got that out of the way… or maybe what seemed like a strange, bombastic reading has some relevance.
How many people have family members or close friends who you aren’t speaking to or can’t talk to about religion or politics? How many have divided houses when it comes to big, important issues?
Maybe Jesus was on to something.
We all know the peace-and-love Jesus, and that’s the Jesus we hold dear. That’s the Jesus we want to study and to emulate. And that’s what we should do.
But we also need to remember that Jesus was not afraid to call people out.
Blessed are the peacemakers, absolutely. But the status quo then, AND NOW, isn’t peace. We have a lot of work to do.
Here at Christ Church, in our Bible studies we’ve used commentary by a bishop and theologian named N.T. Wright, and we have found him to be helpful for making sense of Scripture. In talking about this passage, Wright says that there may come a time when Christian teachers and leaders find people have become too cozy and comfortable.
He says that maybe churches might start to omit the Bible readings that talk about judgment, or warnings, or the demands of God’s holiness, because they ask something of us. And that maybe there are times when, like Jesus himself on this occasion, we need to wake people up with a crash. There are, after all, he says, plenty of warnings in the Bible about the dangers of going to sleep on the job.
Cruise control does not serve us well when we are heading in the wrong direction, or off a cliff.
“It’s all good” doesn’t work when it’s not all good for a lot of people, or when power and security are held closer to the heart than love and compassion.
Jesus talks to the crowds about how when you see clouds, you know it’s going to rain and when you see the south wind blowing, you know it’s going to get scorching hot.
Granted, weather forecasters don’t get much credit in our world today, but there are so many things we can know, we can predict, we can figure out. Look at all the technology around us and what we can do. On the simplest scale, I was blown away recently with the thought that I can send my family pictures while I am in Alaska and they get them instantaneously back here.
If we can do so many things, how come we can’t step up for those who can’t stand for themselves? How come we still store up earthly treasures but aren’t rich toward God? Let’s look where our treasure is, where our priorities are, and try to see where our collective heart is?
Jesus came to change the direction humanity was heading.
He came to show us a different way to be—one that isn’t easy, one that not everyone will get… a way that will cause division, and will call for the burning of some of our current, misdirected ways.
And he gave his life for that cause, and in today’s reading, he knew that that’s where he was heading.
Maybe it was fair to call out the crowds. And guess what?
We’re the crowds. Maybe it’s still fair to call us out.
N.T. Wright says:
“If the kingdom of God is to come on earth as it is in heaven, part of the prophetic role of the church is to understand the events of the earth and to seek to address them with the message of heaven.”
Maybe we need to do a better job of addressing the world with the message of heaven.
Maybe we should help burn down some of what’s broken for a new way, for a more loving way, for a more caring way.
