"Ordinary Things" July 16, 2017

Genesis 25: 7-10, 19-34 Matthew 13: 1-23 I do not know why, but I walked to church today, and on the way to Church today, I was stopped by a friend, who thanked me for coming to his wife's Memorial. He said, she had had a terrible Cancer for years, and finally one day, having tried everything else I prayed for a miracle. It did not cure her cancer, but I got two miracles. First, the final morning of her life, I called my son to say she was passing, and he drove 11 hours, and was able to be here to hold her in his arms as she died. Second, all the churches, all the ministers and congregations, where I have preached and worshipped all came for her Memorial... In the midst of projects, replacing the floor in our home, which I call a vacation, a friend phoned, saying that her son and his wife and their 8 year old were visiting. The boy’s father was Christian and his mother Jewish, they wanted to wait until he was of age to decide for himself what to believe. Except how could he make a decision, when he had never been taught the truths of Judaism or Christianity? Suddenly this summer he had been filled with questions about God, so could they bring him over for me as the God-guy, to answer all his questions? Sitting in rocking chairs on the porch, trying to answer all the questions of an 8 year old, I believe may be as close as any of us will ever have to the experience of Jesus teaching parables from a boat off shore. My problem, like Jesus’, was how do you step into the middle of a person’s life, to tell them both what they want to know and what you believe is everything they need to know? We as human beings have a basic desire to understand life, we have questions about love and marriage, birth, death and meaning. We have been carefully taught over our lifetimes, that everything has a beginning, a middle and an end. But Jesus’ parables and the stories of the Bible are not one person’s explanation of everything; instead, using ordinary things, events we all might be able to relate to, the Bible in 1st Testament and Gospels, provides us analogies, which are like looking through a lens at who God is. Later this summer, on August 21st, there is to be a Total Eclipse of the Sun. We know this to be an exceedingly rare phenomenon, and that when it happens, you cannot look directly at it for fear of burning your retinas, instead, we look through refracted lenses, that is what a Parable or Bible story is. After so many torrential storms this summer, I thought about changing our sermon, to Noah and Ark, as something we all could relate to. But the point of that story is not that it rained for 40 Days and 40 Nights without ceasing, not that flooding and erosion took place that we can identify with; the point is that humanity had forgotten all about God and were each abusing others for what they wanted, so God determined to begin again with a remnant, one couple and their off-spring protected from chaos in an Ark of the Covenant. The point of that story is not how much it rained that summer, but our recognition of the sins in our lives, and that God could a would begin again with a precious remnant. Generations after Noah, instead of the story being explanation of all the World through Science, God chose a particular couple, whom we may see as like us: Abraham and Sarah. Now while their story is told for several chapters, the stories connect to significant events in their life. Their Calling from God, and their wandering in foreign places with other people; their infertility and desire for fulfillment by any means and the problems created; testing whether their desire after fulfillment, is as great as their trust in God? The death of a spouse and marriage of one’s adult children. The faith being carried on in the next generation, even with their own infertility. Infertility is treated as an ordinary thing, and a hard issue in the Bible. Today, 10% of the American population struggles with infertility. But in the Bible, the point of infertility was not just ability to conceive, but whether your life was blessed by God or hopes and dreams were denied you. Hard to understand in the moment, difficult circumstance sometimes prepare us for miracles, we otherwise would not see. But Isaac and Rebecca then give birth to twins. As familiar as this has become to us, even with fertility drugs and surgery, only about 3% of births are multiples. Imagine the difficulty this week in South Sudan, of twins being born to a woman, without all of our Western Medical intervention, only two Midwives, and the twins happened to present Breech! I think part of the importance of this, is the Bible explaining there are multiple ways to God, like twins wrestling in our womb, only one of which can we follow. What has been routinely neglected, that I think is the most wonderful part of the Story of Abraham, is that when he died, Isaac and Ishmael BOTH, TOGETHER, ancestor of Judaism and Christianity and the ancestor of Islam, buried their father. In the midst of this miracle, comes this oracle in verse 23 that “The One shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the Younger.” This is not the way of the world. There is something dark in Jacob, always insisting, grasping for more, exploiting opportunities. This is a profound theological claim, that all opportunities are not open to us. It does not suggest we are denied freedom, but there is destiny. Some options are closed, some choices denied; YET God has the power to make Promises and fulfill them in spite of human expectations. We are not FATED to the way the world is presented to us. Primogeniture, the rights of the first-born, was not a Law from God, it is cultural tradition, human nature. Jacob will contest with the way things are. There is nothing wrong, or evil in Esau, he simply had the context of being Jacob’s twin. Over the centuries, people have interpreted this parable of Jesus in so many ways. What is fabulous about parables, is there is no one way to interpret, and our ordinary circumstance routinely brings new understanding. What I love about the Story of the Sower of Seeds, at this point in life, is that God is the sower of grace, and as precious as God’s Grace is, God does not sow miracles as if single seed planted for maximum yield and productivity. I have a brother who is a specialist in Dairy Science, he is paid to walk onto your farm knowing how to increase the maximum output from each cow. God is unconcerned with maximum output or efficiency, Grace is scattered by God like a carpet upon the earth. There are abundance for everyone, if we only have eyes to see. The secret to life is knowing what is in your control and what is not. In the ministry, there is a lot that we have absolutely no control over. Oh, we try to do things in the most efficient manner, with the greatest of expertise, but the number of Baptisms, Believers, Births, The number of Weddings, the number of Funerals, are not in our control. But we can help with the ordinary things, listening to the questions of an 8 year old, and trying to respond as best we can.