Soul’s Food

There is a sort of joke that Evan Garner, the rector here at St. John’s, has been telling since I started working here over three years ago: Jesus gives out horrible farming advice. This seems an especially important point when serving with a congregation full of agricultural wizards. Case in point, this Sunday’s Gospel lesson in which Jesus denies a farmer with a great yield the opportunity to store more of his grains by building bigger barns. However, what Jesus lacks in real world farming techniques he makes up for in wise ways of living into the Kingdom of God.

In the Parable of the Rich Fool, a man whose land produced abundantly, contemplates ripping down his old silos to manufacture greater ones. The dilemma for Jesus does not consist in this potentially wise investment, but rather in the reasoning behind it. As the man weighs his options he says to his soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” We might be quick to latch onto this as a critique of the good life, and soon outlaw anything that involves relaxing, eating, drinking, or being merry; however, the Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina group that meets here at St. John’s on Thursday mornings found more troubling the man’s belief that he could feed his own soul.

Soul food often refers to a type of delicious home cooked cuisine that is sometimes tied to the South. This food and the fellowship that can surround any instance of preparing and sharing a meal together does in fact feed one’s soul; however, the rich fool goes a step further believing that he could in some way provide sustenance for his own spirit for many years without relying upon his servants, his community, and most notably God. This is the default sin that lies within each and every one of us: I can do this on my own!

Regardless of who we are, from where we come, or what we do we all struggle with the temptation to put ourselves ahead of God and others—to put ourselves in the place of God. We may not do this by telling ourselves we have nothing to worry about for years, but some kind of greed awaits each one of us. The silos that this rich fool could build would dangerously silo him off from the rest of the world. We might instead think, “I do not need someone who would vote for _______. The world would be better off without that person.” We might question, “How can someone support black (or blue) lives matter? The world would be better off without that person.” We could even say, “I do not need to go to church, pray, study Scripture, sit in silence, tithe, or _______, for I already did that last year.” To all of these God says, “You fool! This very [moment] your life is being demanded of you.”

I am certain that we need God and we need each other more than we have in my entire lifetime. The world feels as though it is ripping at the seams. We are at each other’s throats over very important issues. However, the more we silo ourselves off thinking, “Soul, you are set for many years,” the more our souls become malnourished like withering flowers without light or water. For our souls to be fed we must turn away from the notion that we are alright on our own without friend, family, neighbor, and God’s presence in them. We must bust open our barns to share the resources of time, talent, and treasure with one another. We must say to each other, “Will you help to feed my soul, for it is richer living a life with one another than one disconnected?” We need more soul food in our lives, and to enjoy it we must eat with one another.

IF... Is A Dangerous Word, But An Important One

But if it dies, it bears much fruit.

IF is a dangerous word. It’s the type of word that can drive me crazy. If I get all my work finished then I will be happy. If I clean my apartment, then I can rest. If I get my sermon completed, then I do not have anything to worry about. The “ifs” of the world even keep me up at night. What if a storm crashes through Decatur? What if something happens to my niece or nephews? What if my beloved Kim stops loving me?

IF is a dangerous word. I find myself gripping tightly the false sense of safety all around me, so that I do not hear the “ifs” getting louder and louder. Pray more, believe harder, go on a run, or watch something on TV, so to take my mind off the chances of this world. The grain of my life seems so fragile and with all the “ifs” I wonder, what “if” my grain dies?

IF is not just a dangerous word though. If a single grain of wheat remains gripped tightly in my hand, like all the desires, hopes, and dreams that have no room to breathe or even be, then that single grain of wheat remains just that, a single grain of wheat. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. My knuckles jut out from my hand, they turn a pale shade of white, and what is held within my hand has no chance to survive if I keep holding on.

IF I release my grip and turn my hand over the seeds that I have been given fall out of my control and into the ground. I might be able to drop the seed on some good soil, surround it with good earth, and provide it with life-sustaining water, but only God can help it to grow. So much of life feels like gripping onto what we have earned, achieved, or been given. Prosperity, savings, and whatever state of health we have; children, friends, and the relationships we have formed; the Church, our Faith, and the spirituality that makes us whole; everything that we hold dear to us, everything that we hold onto as more precious than life itself has no chance of living if it remains hidden within the grip of our clutches.

But what happens if we let light shine upon our inmost desires? What will occur if I let my true self shine? I love my life, but am I not simply living safely behind the façade of tightly clinched fist?

Jesus invites us to throw down the seeds of our lives, not so that they will immediately be prosperous, nor so that we can reap the benefits of a quick return on investment, but instead so that our deepest desires may die. Death freaks me out. Failing scares me even more. To expose my dreams that typically remain tightly gripped makes my stomach churn just thinking about it.

Yet, to live our life in Christ is to give up on perfectly enacting our desires. To live in Christ is to die to what we think is best. To dwell with Christ means that we risk failure, humiliation, pain, suffering, misunderstanding, and death. For a single grain of wheat will remain just a grain of wheat, but if it dies it bears much fruit. Our deepest desires do not die just because, they die so that we might live life in Christ.

Loosen your grip, let go of your seeds that are your dreams, your hopes, your vision for your life. Those seeds will die in some way or another. Yet, when they die Jesus will resurrect them in ways that are too profound, too magnificent, too lovely for us to imagine. Let go and let God.

Pulling Weeds

As a teenager, I never liked pulling weeds in my mother's vegetable garden. I would mow the lawn, edge the spots that the mower missed, and haul limbs or branches to the trash collection area, but kneeling down to pluck up pesky plants... NO, THANKS! Certainly now I feel a bit differently, I enjoy the task of watering, WEEDING, and picking the community garden at St. John's. However, even as I have grown to enjoy this menial work; this coming Sunday's gospel lesson would have been so helpful as an adolescent.

Jesus' parable of the evil sower and its explanation (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43) describes the Kingdom of Heaven as a place where the evil one plants nutrient sucking weeds right next to the good wheat, and instead of getting rid of the weeds immediately the master tells his servants to let the weeds grow. Why did I not use this great story to get out of weeding as a teenager? It is right here in the text, "Let both of them grow until the harvest." That was my ticket out of all the hard work.

Yet, this parable truthfully does not primarily function as a way to shirk responsibility in our backyards, rather like most (if not all of his) parables Jesus challenges us to see a glimpse of the Kingdom of Heaven within a simple story. I often find myself looking for my place in the Kingdom. Maybe you do this as well. How can we not put ourselves in there? Yet, as we insert ourselves as is into this story or last week's Parable of the Sower we believe that we understand the parable, or worse we make the parable about ourselves (and not having to pick weeds).

As Steve Pankey recently stated in his blog "As soon as one thinks they’ve grasped the meaning of a parable, they’ve lost it." We can believe that the meaning of a parable is all about us and how great we are, what good soil we are, or what great wheat we have become. Jesus though uses these many images (shepherds, farmers, a woman searching for her coin, two brothers and a father, a mustard seed, and on and on) to describe as many different vantage points within the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God, for us, so that we might just catch a glimpse of how life can be with God.

So often, I want to find my place in the parable so that I do not have to change my life. Just about every time I read a story about Jesus I try to make it about me and my life. While this is human nature to a certain extent, Jesus tells these simple stories not to build up our egos, not to make us feel good about who we are, not to hand us a worthless participation trophy, but to plant a good seed within us. Only Christ's goodness places this within us, but we are not incapable of messing with the seed's growth. We can ignore the hard work of looking inside and seeing how Christ would grow us through these stories, we can place ourselves in the story as is and cheapen the power of the parables, or God's Word can convict us to be transformed by the healing love of Christ. I say, let it grow.

Matthew 3:1-12: More Than Just "Do This, Do That"

Have you ever played the game called “Do This, Do That”? It’s not all that popular, so maybe you have never played it. But the leader of the game, does actions (kinda like this) and while saying, “Do this.” Those who are playing the game mirror the leader’s actions. The game keeps going on in this fashion until the leader says, “Do that.” And whatever action the leader does while saying “Do that,” is the only thing that gets players “out” of the game. So basically players copy the leader’s example while she or he says “Do this,” but as soon as she or he says “Do that,” one ceases to follow the leader’s motions. So let’s play one round, shall we?

Not to toot my own horn too much, but I was really good at this game. Not because I was super quick and had instinctive hand-eye reflexes, but rather the opposite was the case. I was slow and so I was always a move or two behind. When everyone was “oohing” and “awing” because the leader said, “Do That!” I was a step late and could stop in anticipation of what was to come.

The season of Advent is a prophetic season that often comes off sounding like, “Do This, Do That.” We look ahead to Christ’s coming both in the person of Jesus 2,000 years ago and the future advent of Christ. It’s a season when we are eternally looking ahead. Often we may hear the prophets telling us as we wait to “Do this and do that,” or better yet, “Do this, and don’t do that.”

We can hear John the Baptist this morning as the king of “Do this, Do That.” John is out in the wilderness saying “Come on out… Do this,” “The Kingdom of Heaven has come near, turn around, do this,” “Come into the waters of Baptism, do this.” Of course, the game of “Do This” changes suddenly to one of “Don’t Do That,” as soon as the Pharisees and Sadducees enter into the waters of the River Jordan.

Starting off the conversation calling the Jewish leaders, “You brood of vipers,” makes it seem as though the deck is stacked in this game. Yet, I can see a wry smile on the face of the Baptizer, as he asks, “Who warned you of the wrath to come?” John sees these hyper-religious men as people who rely so heavily upon their rituals that they have forgotten that it is not religion that they worship, but God. He warns them that entering into these life-giving, renewing waters is no empty gesture. True baptism to the prophet is shown in the good fruit it produces. “Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” he says. Do not cling to your ancestor’s merits for God can raise up stones to be children of Father Abraham. Then, John gifts us hearers with two images that at first appear to be dichotomous, either/or, “Do This, Do That,” yet they provide a subtle way for us to prepare for Christ’s coming both as a community and as individuals.

On the surface, we hear either, “you will be a tree bearing good fruit” or “you will be cut down”; “you will be wheat” or “you will be chaff.” There was a tree in the backyard of my childhood home, a great, beautiful apple tree. When I was in elementary school I would excitedly run outside almost every autumn morning to pick fruit from its branches. Then, I would put it in my lunch bag and proudly pull out some homegrown good produce at school. Yet, as the years went on and on, the tree grew older and older, and it bore less and less fruit. Eventually, this once fruitful apple tree slowly started to decay and die. While this saddened me, what I learned from watching this little backyard ecosystem was that even in the process of dying this dying tree was continuing to grab nutrients from the soil and its branches were blocking the sunlight from other smaller seedlings.

John’s warning about the trees bearing good fruit can be taken as a warning to “be good,” whatever that might mean, but maybe what the Baptist is crying about is a need to make way for new growth within our religious communities. I do not intend to pick up an axe and start chopping down dying ministries within our church, nor do I want to light fires to our tradition, but perhaps we together can see where pruning and maybe even hacking is in order to allow for something fresh to sprout. Where is the good fruit in our church? Where are those decaying things that take up our energy? What is blocking good new growth from happening? John’s cry is for us to dream something new together to bring it about and not to cling too tightly to the old ways. Yet there is another image.

One is coming who is more powerful than John, and his baptism is with the Holy Spirit and fire. The image that John uses for this fiery one to come is an agricultural image. The messiah will come with a winnowing fork in hand, as Lucy McCain said in centering prayer this week, there is grace in that he is not carrying a shovel. Yet the end of this image of the messiah seems a bit scary: the wheat is kept in the granary and the chaff is burnt up in an unquenchable fire.

I am not a great farmer, and we have many green thumbs in our church, so if what I am about to say is wrong, please correct me: Wheat is made up of grain and chaff. The chaff is that which protects the nutritious grain from bugs and the elements until the time is right for the grain to be harvested in the granary. John’s image is not asking us to think, “In the life to come do you prefer smoking or non-smoking?” as some church signs read. Rather, we are the stalks of wheat. We have a part of us that protects us from being fully vulnerable with one another and with God. Christ’s call is to shake off that chaff. Let the part of us that is keeping us isolated, alone, and “safe” be burned up in the unquenchable fire. Now I know this sounds scary, but we cannot live fireproof lives. We do not possess flame-retardant spirits. Part of us, that bit that separates us from one another has to be torched.

Once we let that chaff go, then we can come together. We can enter into the granary. As our grains come forth we are pressed together and turned into that flour that makes the bread of life. This is the good news hidden within the “Do This, Don’t Do That” game that John seems to be calling out in the wilderness. Once we move beyond our initial panic of believing that the Baptist is speaking of heaven and hell we can hear this truly difficult, yet fully inspiring message. With God we are called to cut down that which is dying and not bearing fruit in our community in order for new growth to happen and to shed the chaff providing us false security, so that we can come together to form the bread of life. In this season of Advent when we are asked to slow down and be quiet, to watch and wait, to stop and listen, God is coming to be with us. It is not a game of “Do This, Do That,” it is a time of discernment to prune our hearts and ministries, to shed the chaff so that God can bear in us good fruit and form our grains into the Bread of Life.