PRMSE TO EXILES July 20, 2008

Genesis 28:10-19
Matthew 13:24-34

Why is life so hard? Why is there evil in the world?
Surely, if God is all powerful and all knowing, God could have made the world a little easier for us. Humanity has split the atom, put computers in all our lives, but rather than making life better, simpler, more convenient, it appears there is that much more to do.

In the Early Church, the Donatists of North Africa believed they could/should separate the good from the bad in human life, and only the good, only the pure, only the righteous would have access to the Church, to God, to the best things in life. Over against these Donatists, were those who followed St. Augustine, who looked to this parable from Jesus, claiming all this life, including faith and the Church, belong to God. As God's field, we cannot root up the evil, the wrong, the perverse or corrupt, without also doing harm to one another, which would be far worse than allowing evil to grow.

The Physician's Code is to “DO NO HARM”, meaning to offer treatment to reduce or eliminate suffering without creating greater problems, then the Christians' Code is like this, for the problem with acting against evil is that we often cannot tell whether one's actions and motivations are good or evil until they are fulfilled.

In one parable, Jesus describes A SOWER WENT OUT TO SOW SEED. When sowing seed, God did not get down on hands and knees to make a hole and carefully plant every single seed. Nor, did the sower dig and furrow the soil efficiently planting in nice neat rows. God's blessings are SO over-abundant that the seed is cast far and wide on all the earth, like the torrent of rains that fell yesterday, not only falling upon the earth, but blanketing the ground, even standing in puddles for the earth to gradually take it all in.

In this next, Jesus describes that, after the good seed had been planted, covering the field, an enemy came. It would have been immediately destructive and hurtful to destroy to poison what had been planted in abundance, but the enemy was far more insidious. This enemy came at night, and among the seed of good wheat, also sowed TARES, seeds of weeds that sprout and grow up looking just like blades of wheat, until the grain appears, a grain which is poisonous and foul. Worse than falling upon rock, or eaten by birds, or choked by weeds, mixed in among the Wheat, the grain of Tares would waste the time of the whole season's planting. Not only crowding out the good grain, and poisoning the harvest, but making others suspect everything until you were uncertain whom or what you could trust. So the landowner, determines to wait, to be patient, NEVER GIVING UP upon the harvest. For the landowner knows two things, others had not counted upon. First, that the good seed can persevere, the wheat itself will not be poisoned or harmed by being surrounded in a field of TARES or TERRORS. And ALSO, that harvesting the wicked ROOT and PLANT and SEED of the WEEDs, will create a resource to be burned as fuel for the harvest of what is good.

The parable of the LEAVEN is difficult for us, because it is double-edged. If ever you have baked bread, you know that it only takes a tiny amount, 1/12th as much yeast as the measure of flour, cured and kneaded throughout the mixture to make the batter rise double even triple in size. Our difficulty is that like the wheat and tares, good and evil, right and wrong permeate us all. Despite what our Mothers have said about us, as far as any know, there has only ever been one in all human life who truly has been without sin, and him we made to suffer and die for us all. While faith, like yeast is planted in us beginning at an early age, and grows to permeate the whole of life, so also do our fears. And afterward, the only evidence is that this is what filled the voids and holes in us.
JACOB is an odd sort of Hero. He robs and cheats his brother, deceives his dying father, so that Jacob can Possess Everything. If the Goal of Life is to Have it All; to POSSESS Everything: Jacob WINS! He not only receives the promise of The Land, and Prosperity, Love and Children, Isaac's Blessing of his son gives Jacob the PROMISE of PROMISE, the Blessing of being Blessed. Isaac's excesses are so great, that when he ultimately discovers he has been duped, he cannot even give ESSAU “Nothingness”, what he has left to give his less than that, only CURSES and Suffering can he wish for the Elder Son.

Having Gotten Away with everything, Jacob runs away, BANISHED to a SELF-EXILE.
Our Call to Worship and Confession this day, is hard for some of us to hear. We strive to live integrated lives, to be one with our community and accepting of others. The pain is that there are parts of life, experiences and relationships that cost us, that break our spirit and kill, our soul, violate even our humanity.

IF we are to become the Future, at what cost?
Must we (as a people of faith) be as EXILES in A FOREIGN LAND? Among Biblical Archaeologists, there is a growing idea that after Solomon Israel was destroyed, but rather than the people being carried off to a Babylonian Exile, their own culture and society became so enmeshed with the Babylonian, the Israelites became EXILES WITHIN THE PROMISED LAND.

To be an EXILE, to be BANISHED, was to have been sentenced to a fate worse than death. To remain biologically alive, yet never able to go Home, never again to see family, to Feel Needed, Wanted, Known, Loved. The TARES that have been planted in our lives, are that we so value our isolation, our avoidance of pain and suffering and people, that we adopt lives of EXILE, like JACOB Living self-imposed banishment so as to guard and protect what we possess from having to be shared with others, from having to share ourselves, having to feel, because feeling we may be wounded, violated, killed.

Finally having run so far, for so long, he lays down to sleep. Here in his Dreams, Jacob encounters what Shakespeare described in Romeo and Juliet's soliloquy “To BE or NOT To Be”, “To sleep, perchance to dream...” We can fairly well control our thoughts and actions in the day, but asleep we are more vulnerable to everything around us. JACOB'S Dream is not a Psychosis, of working out in the unconscious. Not a Nightmare wrestling with Demons... Not this one. This is a revelation from God, as real as a Vision, a Theophany, as had appeared to Noah, to Abraham and Isaac. This PROMISE to the EXILED is a connection of HEAVEN and EARTH. Not a means of climbing the Beanstalk into a Castle in the clouds, not means of accessing Heaven by avoiding death. JACOB'S LADDER is a statement of Commitment, that God can always find us. We may EXILE ourselves, we may banish every one who cares about us, we may try to surround ourselves and fill ourselves with our possessions and promises, only our hopes and dreams, YET STILL there is God, who can always get to us.

Even more, Jacob witnesses that Heaven is very busy providing blessings to Earth. No Matter how many possessions, no matter how much Jacob had gotten from his family, cheating his brother and WINNING the Game, still there was always far more available from God, mare than we could ever even know in ten thousand lifetimes.

Wy is life so hard, at least in part because we are not supoosed to be exiled. God is always looking for connections with us, no matter what we have done, or whom we are.