Jackie

Turning Points and Transformation

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Turning Points and Transformation (Feast of the Transfiguration)

Exodus 34: 29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Peter 1:13-21; Luke 9:28-36

Turning points and transformation – that’s what we’re about today – turning points and transformation.  Jesus is transformed, and he arrives at a turning point in his life and ministry.  With the announcement last week of the call and imminent arrival of Father Rich, your next rector, you, the people who are St. Timothy’s, are at a turning point in your life.  It will be interesting to see how you will be transformed – both individually and as a congregation – as you begin this next leg of your journey.

Usually we hear the story of the Transfiguration on the last Sunday of Epiphany.  It’s a wonderful high point before we plunge into the depths of the season of Lent a few days later.  This year, since the Feast of the Transfiguration – August 6 – falls on a Sunday, we get to look at the story again, taking a break from our journey through the Gospel of Matthew.  (I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to take a break from the images of being thrown into the fire and of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth!).  Just for today we move to Luke’s Gospel.  Matthew, Mark and Luke all record Jesus’ Transfiguration, and that speaks both of its importance and of its truth.  It likely really did happen.  In each of the three accounts, the Transfiguration occurs just after Peter has identified Jesus as the Messiah, just after Jesus has told his disciples that part of being the Messiah, part of that identity, will involve his rejection by religious authorities.  That rejection will lead to his betrayal and suffering and death, which in turn will lead to his resurrection three days later.

Jesus takes three of his disciples– Peter, James, and John – up a mountain.  It seems he was hoping to find God there on that mountaintop.  Or at least he was getting away from the crowds and distractions down below to have a better chance of listening for God.  Imagine the scene that unfolds.  While Jesus was praying, his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white, and the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples saw him in all his glory.  They saw Jesus as more than the earth-born son of Mary.  They saw him as the eternal Son of God as well.  It’s easy to see the parallels with Moses who climbed another mountain to find God, to speak with God.  God appeared to Moses in a cloud.  When he returned from his mountaintop encounter with God, his appearance, too, was changed.  His face shone.

Peter, the well-meaning but sometimes bumbling disciple, wants to capture and preserve the moment of Jesus’ Transfiguration.  We’d be getting out our phones to take selfies with them, but Peter went for what was available in his day.  I can hear the enthusiasm in his voice.  “Come on, guys, quick!  Let’s build three booths, three dwellings for these three holy ones we’ve just seen – one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus.”  As Peter was speaking, a cloud – a sign of divine presence – enveloped them.  They were terrified.  And then God spoke to them from the cloud, “This is my Son, my Chosen,” – the same words spoken from the cloud at Jesus’ baptism.  This time God adds, “Listen to him!”

With three versions of the same story, I always like to look at the different details a particular Gospel writer includes. Luke tells us something about the time of day this might have occurred.  I’ve looked at this story of Jesus’ Transfiguration many times, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that it occurred to me it likely took place at night.  I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that before.  Perhaps it’s because I wouldn’t think about setting out to climb a mountain at the end of the day, leaving me there to find my way down in the dark.  Perhaps it’s because only Luke tells us the three disciples Jesus had invited to go with him – Peter, John and James, – were weighed down with sleep.  Later, these same three disciples will also be weighed down with sleep when Jesus asks them to watch and wait and pray with him on another mountain, the Mount of Olives.  On the night before his death, these disciples will fall asleep while Jesus prays again, this time in anguish that he might be spared his coming death.  If the disciples were so sleepy on the Mount of Transfiguration, it makes sense that it was nighttime.  I can imagine their vision of the Transfiguration was all the more spectacular if it did happen in the dark.

Only Luke tells us Jesus prayed when he got to the top of the mountain, and it was while he was praying that the appearance of his face and his clothes were changed.  Only Luke tells us what it was Moses and Elijah were saying.  They were talking about Jesus’ departure, but really the Greek word would be better translated exodus.  This exodus, Jesus’ death, was not something that would happen to Jesus, it was something he would accomplish.  And this Moses the Law-giver and Elijah the Prophet are confirming what Jesus has already told his incredulous disciples he must do: that he must die in order to lead his people out of their bondage to sin and death into the freedom of abundant life in him.   We remember that in Luke’s account of the baptism, it was while Jesus was praying following his baptism that the Holy Spirit descended upon him and that God’s voice spoke from the heavens identifying Jesus as God’s beloved son.  Once again, it is while Jesus is praying that God’s voice speaks and confirms Jesus is the beloved Son, the chosen one.  And, the voice compels the disciples, “Listen to him!”  Pay attention to him.  Follow what he says and what he does.  It was in that experience that the three disciples’ knowledge of Jesus changed.  He was something more than the man they had been following as teacher and rabbi.

The Transfiguration marks a turning point in Jesus’ life and ministry.  Tempting as it may have been, Jesus and his inner circle of disciples do not stay on the mountain following their spectacular encounter with God.  They have to go down from the mountain.  They have to go back to work.  Their ministry in Galilee is wrapping up.  From this point, Jesus’ face is set towards Jerusalem where betrayal and death await.  Just as Baptism was his preparation for ministry, so the Transfiguration serves as his preparation for his final trials.

Transfiguration and transformation come from the same Middle English root word meaning “to change shape.”  In the Transfiguration, the depth of who Jesus is is brought to the surface so those around him can see it.  His face, clothes and appearance are transformed.  Jesus’ face shone, and Luke tells us the three disciples “saw his glory.”  Jesus is transformed, showing the true depth of who he is.  The sound of the heavenly voice confirms what they have seen.  As we ponder this story, we wonder, was it Jesus who was changed, or the disciples?

Beginning a new chapter in your journey as a congregation, there will be opportunities for you to discover the depths of who you are.  This turning point in your communal life can serve as a turning point for each of you on your individual spiritual journeys.  As we think about the Transfiguration and about Moses’ encounter with God on top of Mount Sinai, we’re reminded that on our individual journeys, prayer is a crucial component.  Setting some time apart, some time away from the demands of our daily routine, is one way we might come to see the glory of God in greater depth and be transformed.  How does that happen for you?  Perhaps you have a special place, one where you’ve encountered God in the past, been more keenly aware of God’s presence.  Some find that in a particular place in their home, perhaps a chair they go to for daily time of prayer.  Some have found our diocesan retreat center at Shrine Mont to be such a place.  I could see it was for my grandson Sam when I picked him up from camp on Friday – and got to be the celebrant for their closing Eucharist.  As we think about how we might draw closer to God, Luke’s version of the story especially commends prayer to us. Prayer really is conversation with God, and I sometimes need to remind myself that prayer is two-way conversation, listening for God as well as – even more than – talking to God.

There are many examples of transformation in the people of the Bible.  Esther was transformed from a beauty queen to a courageous woman who dared risk her life in order to save the lives of her people.  Peter was transformed from a fisherman to the impetuous, well meaning but often coming up short disciple, and then to the stabilizing rock upon which God built the Body of Christ.  For me, the most dramatic example of transformation is the Apostle Paul.  Following his encounter with God on the road to Damascus, Saul of Tarsus changed from the one who zealously persecuted the followers of Christ to become a great leader of the Christian Church, indeed to be THE apostle to the Gentiles.  All of these examples began as ordinary people.  Yet each one of them had within them the potential to become – with God’s help and with some intentionality on their part – what they eventually were transformed into.  Each one of us, too, have within us all that is needed for our transformation.

When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, his appearance was changed.  His face shone because he had been talking with God.  Jesus’ changed appearance also reflected the glory of God.  I wonder how we might reflect to those around us our time with God?  Will we be changed by it in a way that folks around us can see and take note?  That might be one of the hopes for life together as you embark on the next chapter of your life as a parish…that others will see God’s glory reflected in your faces and in your life together and be inspired to come and join in the fun you have and the good work you do..  Amen.

 

The Rev. Jacqueline C. Thomson

St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church, Herndon, VA

August 6, 2017

Kaleidoscopes and the Kingdom

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July 29, 2017 Sermon by The Rev. Jacqueline C. Thomson

Proper 12A-2

Genesis 29:15-28; Psalm 105:1-11, 45b; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Kaleidoscopes.  I remember these toys from my childhood; do you?  It was fun to hold one and look into the light, to delight in the beautiful colors and shapes and patterns.  With just a little twist or turn, I would see something entirely new, something I had never seen before.

Today Matthew offers us a kaleidoscope in his grouping of five parables of God’s kingdom.  He fires them in rapid succession, and each one gives a new twist or turn.  The kingdom of heaven is like…a mustard seed…like yeast…like a treasure hidden in a field…like a pearl of great value…like a fishnet let down into the sea.  Taking things from ordinary, everyday life, Jesus offers five new glimpses into the holy.  He engages our imaginations as he invites us to probe the mystery of the reign of God.  We wonder what it will look like, how we might look for it, where we might look for it and even whether we should look for it at all.  The parables invite us to ponder what the shapes and patterns of God’s kingdom will be…or already are.  They call us to examine our role and responsibility in the kingdom and in the spread of the kingdom.  Each parable sheds a little more light on something we can’t completely describe, something we can’t fully know.

For the past two weeks Jesus has been teaching in parables.  He has taken the stuff of the people’s everyday lives – farmers sowing seeds and weeds growing up alongside the wheat – to tell them about the reign of God.  The disciples have seemed puzzled by this teaching method, and so for these first two parables Jesus has offered them an explanation.  In the portion of the passage that we skipped over, Jesus tells the crowds that in order to fulfill scripture, he will only teach in parables, that he will proclaim that which has been hidden from the foundation of the world.  For today’s parables, there are no explanations.

We are left to our own devices, to our own pondering and imagining.

The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds that grows into the greatest of shrubs, large enough that birds can find shelter in its branches.  The kingdom of God is like yeast that the homemaker mixed with three measures of flour, and all of it was leavened.  The mustard seed and the yeast, paired together, seem to suggest both the hidden-ness and the amazing abundance of God’s kingdom.  Both start small.  Both begin their growth in such a way that we can’t see it at first.  In both parables Jesus exaggerates the outcome.  My guess is he exaggerates to drive home the point that God’s harvest is abundant beyond our wildest imaginings.  The mustard seed is indeed very small, and it does grow into a bush – just not a bush large enough that we might mistake it for a tree.  I haven’t seen them lately (but then I haven’t been looking for them) but when I was growing up, many of us wore a necklace with a clear capsule containing one small mustard seed.  It was a symbol, I think, for our faith that begins very small and yet can grow and bear an amazingly large harvest.

The small amount of yeast the woman added to her bread dough was enough to leaven the entire batch.  Three measures of flour didn’t mean anything to me.  I assumed it meant maybe three cups.  But no, three measures of flour is about fifty pounds of flour, enough to feed a hundred people.  If we turn the kaleidoscope of this parable of abundance just a bit, it seems to look ahead to the feeding of the multitudes with just a small amount of bread.  And a turn backwards of the kaleidoscope shows us the story of Abraham asking Sarah to prepare the same amount of flour – three measures – for their three heavenly visitors.  Theirs was a very generous gift of hospitality.  And a turn still further ahead, and we see in our kaleidoscopes the heavenly bread upon which we will feast in just a few minutes.  Yet another turn of the kaleidoscope takes us in an entirely different direction.  I can see a young boy who was contemplating this parable of the yeast.  He made the observation that “Once you put the yeast into the flour, you cannot take it out.”  Once God’s kingdom begins to take root within us, we cannot take it out and we cannot stop its action on us.

Likely you remember Randy Pausch who died nine years ago.  He was the professor at Carnegie Mellon University whose final talk to his students, known as the Last Lecture, made him famous.  When he spoke, about 400 students, faculty, and friends assembled.  He was 47 and had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  His goal in sharing his approach to the dying process was that his three young children might later value the videotape of the talk.  His life lessons could be summed up in two points: 1) love those you are with and show them you love them and 2) follow your dreams by being kind, earnest, and honest, by working hard and realizing that the brick walls in life are there to separate those who really want to do something from those who only say they want to.  Another lesson I gleaned from his talk was his ability to face his death and to live each of his remaining days as fully and joyfully as he could.  “If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you.  I’m dying, and I’m having fun.”

What Professor Pausch did began in a very small way.  He initially spoke to a relatively small audience, and his actual intended audience was his three young children.  And yet, his message spread far beyond his wildest imaginings.  I happen to know about him – and now you do, too (though I suspect many of you did already) because someone forwarded me an e-mail with the link to his Last Lecture.  More than 6 million people have viewed highlights, if not the entire lecture.  He appeared on Oprah.  2.8 million copies of a bestseller he never intended to write are now in print.  The smallest seed has branched out and provided shelter for many who are facing death.  Randy’s experience of holy living and holy dying will feed many times the one family he hoped to console.

The hidden treasure and the pearl of great price: are a pair of parables about finding something of great value, about buying and selling.  Both speak of giving up everything for the one prize.  Both involve a gamble, but one is a very risky venture by a person of little means.  The other is a more calculated risk by a person of some means.  One treasure is found by pure accident; the other is found in the process of diligent and informed searching.  The pearl merchant knows her stuff.  She’s been in the business for years.  She knows that size and color and luster matter.  And when she finds THE pearl, she knows it.  A person stumbles on a treasure which has been hidden in a field.  (That was the first century’s version of our safe deposit boxes!)  It seems this individual wasn’t looking for a treasure; he just happened upon it.  He re-buried it, hiding it from others, and went and sold everything he had in order to buy the property where the treasure was buried.  Like the pearl merchant who sold everything she had, it cost this man everything he had to buy that field.  Was it worth it?  As it turns out, it was.

I’d like to give the kaleidoscope a few turns on this parable of the pearl of great price.  I wonder what those pearls are in our lives.  What in your life is so valuable that you would be willing to give up everything you have in order to keep it?  For some, it might be the next promotion at work.  For others, it would be finally getting your research published.  For a couple who have been through a host of fertility treatments, it is the blue bundle sleeping in the next room, definitely worth all they’ve been through.  For others it might be a home you’ve spent your fortune obtaining and your lifetime fixing up.  Those answers are all tempting for me, but if I must narrow it to one thing that would be my family – a husband, four children, and ten grandchildren – all of them amazing and delightful human beings – most of the time.  We all have our moments!  If Jesus did offer an explanation of this parable, I don’t think any of these choices would be his answer.  A few weeks ago, I wondered with some trepidation whether I put as much of myself into tending my spiritual garden as I put into tending my flower garden.  I think that might be the pearl of great value: our relationship with God.  Am I willing to let go of everything I have and put that first?  Like the treasure buried in the field, I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.  It is pure gift.  Will I value it for all it is worth – above and before all else?  That is a tall order.

Jesus doesn’t give us a definitive answer to the treasure or the pearl’s identity.  That’s one of the beauties of the parables – they aren’t all spelled out for us.  They invite our continued pondering.  So, as we look at the pearl, I’d like to give our kaleidoscopes a new twist.  What if we – you and I – each were to consider ourselves the pearl of great value?  What new light would that shed on God’s kingdom?  We recall that we are God’s beloved.  As God spoke to Jesus at his Baptism, so God speaks to us, “You are my beloved son.  You are my beloved daughter.  With you I am well pleased.”

Speaking to a group of people long before he became the bishop of Massachusetts, Tom Shaw urged each one to think of himself, to think of herself as a pearl of great value, hidden in this world.  Consider yourself the precious pearl for which God was willing to pay the ultimate price.  So precious are we in the eyes of God, Bishop Shaw said, that we really ought to take time each day to allow God to thank us for what we have done for God today.  Can we really allow ourselves to do that, to really believe we are that precious to God?  It will take some practice, but I’m going to try.  Accepting and receiving God’s love are central to our faith.  And we are precious in God’s eyes.  If we can believe that – even just a little bit – we can trust the growth of our faith to the God who loves us, the God who came to live among us and the God who gave up life for us.

Keep your kaleidoscopes handy.  Keep holding these parables up to the light.  Keep turning them and twisting them in new directions.  Listen for God’s call in and through your discoveries.  You are God’s beloved.  You have faith at least as big as a mustard seed, and with the power of God working in you, that is not only enough, it is an abundance.  The kingdom of God is within you this very day.  Amen.

 

The Rev. Jacqueline C. Thomson

St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church, Herndon, VA

July 29, 2017

 

What Kind of Dreamer are You?

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July 23, 2017 Sermon by The Rev. Jacqueline C. Thomson

Proper 11 A

Genesis 28:10-19a; Psalm 139:1-11, 22-23; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

 

What kind of dreamer are you?  There are two kinds of dreams, I would suggest – the dreams we think about consciously when we’re awake and the dreams we have when we’re sleeping and can’t control our thoughts.  The waking dreams can help us set a path for our lives.  Through middle school and high school, I dreamed of being a teacher.  To help make that dream a reality, I knew I had to study hard and work hard to save money so I could go to college.  Martin Luther King, Jr., had a much grander, more famous dream, summarized in his well-known “I Have a Dream” speech.  Martin dared to dream of a different and better way of life for our nation.  He dreamed of a time when his four young children would no longer be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.  Martin dared to put his very life on the line to help bring his dream to reality.  Dr. King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was imprisoned and abused.  Still, he was committed to nonviolent means of realizing his dream of correcting the injustices of racism and segregation.  What have been your dreams?  What is your dream today?  How have your waking dreams – past and present – made a difference in the way you’ve lived your life?

The second type of dream is interesting in that we have no conscious control over what we dream.  They say we all dream, some four to six times a night for those of us who are older than ten.  It’s curious that some of us seem to remember our dreams while others don’t.  One of my friends was once part of a group of seven women who called themselves “The Dream Team.”  They got together once a month to share the dreams they remembered.  Being part of the group raised Connie’s awareness of her dreams.  She said what she treasured about the group was their feedback on the dreams she shared with them.  They reflected her dreams back to her and, grounded in their knowledge of her, suggested possible meanings.  They did this with incredible tenderness.  When the Dream Team began, Connie was Senior Warden at her parish.  Her most memorable dream that year was one of the rector showing up at Connie’s door carrying a large, very heavy suitcase.  Remembering that our dreams are more about us than about others, the Dream Team suggested the suitcase was about Connie’s extra baggage and not the rector’s.  This dream changed her interactions with the rector.

As we meet Jacob this morning, up to this point, he’s been acting on fulfilling the first kind of dream, his waking dream of ambition: getting all he can get from his father Isaac, even at the expense of his brother Esau.  Earlier, in a parallel story he had claimed the birthright that rightfully belonged to his older twin.  We may not regard his action as just, but there was nothing deceitful about it.  Esau was starving, and Jacob had cooked a really good stew.  “Do you want some?” Jacob asked his brother.  “I’ll happily give you a bowl for a price – your birthright goes to me.”  And so, Esau agreed to “sell” his birthright.  Jacob’s taking of their father’s blessing a little later on was deceitful.  Their mother Rebekah, who favored Jacob, heard that Isaac, by now old and blind and near death, was planning to bestow his blessing on Esau, who was his favorite child.  She summoned Jacob, told him to bring her two kids from their flock so she could prepare Isaac’s favorite meal.  She then dressed Jacob in Esau’s clothes and put the sheepskin on Jacob’s smooth skin to trick Isaac into thinking Jacob was his hairy brother.  Rebekah sent him in to receive the blessing intended for the first born.  Their trickery worked.

Jacob is now running for his life.  Esau is so outraged he has threatened to kill Jacob.  Rebekah tells Isaac she’s tired of Esau’s Hittite wives and wants Jacob to marry “one of his own.”  She proposes sending Jacob from the promised land back to Haran, the land his grandfather Abraham came from.  Jacob will make the same journey Abraham made, a journey of about four hundred miles, – in reverse.  He’s to go to her brother Laban and take one of his daughters as his wife.  With no other option, Jacob leaves his home.  As darkness falls, Jacob is aware it’s no longer safe to travel.  He must have been exhausted because he selects a stone for his pillow and falls into that deep sleep made for the second kind of dreams.

Jacob doesn’t deserve the dream he dreams.  He’s a two-time double crosser who’s robbed his brother of his birthright and his blessing.  (I was curious about the difference between a birthright and a blessing, so I did a little digging.  Both were intended for the firstborn male.  The birthright gave the elder son the role as head of the household with the authority to rule over the clan.  The father’s blessing gave him a double portion of the inheritance.)  Jacob is an accomplished deceiver, who’s pulled the wool over his own smooth hands and his father’s blind eyes in order to steal what he wants.  He’s a con man on the run, owing his compromised life to his conniving mother’s love.  It seems Jacob has no relationship with God at this point.

It is here in that previously unknown place that Jacob’s dream begins.  His dream is of a ladder – or staircase or ramp (there’s some discussion about the best translation) with its bottom step firmly planted on earth, and subsequent steps extending to heaven.  Angels, God’s messengers, are ascending and descending the steps.  God stands beside Jacob and speaks to him.  “I am the God of your grandfather Abraham and your father Isaac.”  God goes on to make promises to Jacob, nine of them in all.  God repeats the promises made to his forbearers, the promise of land, the promise of many descendants, the promise that all people will be blessed through Jacob.  God then continues with promises that are new to Jacob.  “I will be with you and keep you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land.”  “I will be with you.”  Jesus’ lineage can be traced back to Jacob, and his name Emmanuel means “God with us.”  At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus’ parting words to his disciples are, “I will be with you always, to the ends of the ages.”  The promise made to Jacob is a promise God continues from generation to generation.

Jacob awoke from this dream a changed man.  “Surely, the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!” he exclaimed.  This place is the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”  What an unexpected place for God to show up and to an unexpected person!  This is a place where heaven and earth meet, where God comes to meet us.  Jacob consecrated the stone he had slept on, pouring oil on it, making it an altar and naming the place Bethel – “the house of God.”  Ever the wheeler dealer, Jacob responds to God’s promises to him, offering God a conditional covenant.  “If you will be with me and feed me and clothe me and bring me back to my father’s house, then you will be my God.  This stone will be your house, and I will give you one tenth of all you have given me.”  Jacob wasn’t out looking for God.  He didn’t deserve the dream; he didn’t deserve all God promised him.  But God sought him out.  God chose him despite what he had done.  Jacob believes God’s dream, and he accepts God’s gifts as pure grace.

In a similar way, Jacob’s grandfather Abraham encountered God in a dream; his dream involved a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch.  Because of that vision, Abraham made a covenant with God, and his life and the lives of his people were changed forever.  A dream formed Abraham; a dream formed Jacob and their people, and they became dreamers, too – first Abraham with his fire pot, then Jacob with his ladder, then Jacob’s son Joseph with his dream of sheaves, then Mary’s husband Joseph, who dreamed his holy family to safety in Egypt and back home again.  We, too, are a people of the dream, formed from their dreams and our own, grounded in our openness to believing in the dream and in our courage to follow the dream and birth it into being.

What kind of dreamer are you?  What difference do your dreams make in the way you live your lives?  How do you listen for God speaking through your dreams?  How do you share that dream and bring it to reality?  This year marks the 200th anniversary of Henry David Thoreau’s birth.  I read an article by an English teacher in this week’s paper.  Thoreau was his favorite author, and he tried to make him a favorite of his students, too.  He shared a favorite quote, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”  Thoreau, too, commends our dreams to us, compelling us to pay attention to them and to follow them.

During your time of transition, I’m imagining you’ve done some dreaming about who you as a congregation will be under the leadership of your new rector.  As you anticipate the announcement and arrival of your new leader, you’re probably beginning to dream of some of the things you will work on together.  As a people of the dream, may you discover again and again, “Surely, the Lord is in this place!”  May God continue to bless you through your dreams!  Amen.

 

The Rev. Jacqueline C. Thomson

St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church, Herndon, VA

July 23, 2017

God, the Extravagant Gardener

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July 9, 2017 Sermon by the The Rev. Jacqueline C. Thomson

PROPER 10A-3

Isaiah 55:1-5, 10-13; Psalm 65:9-14; Romans 8:9-17; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

How does your garden grow?  We’re nearly midway through the summer – hard as that is for me to believe – and it’s time for our gardens to be bearing fruit.  It’s time for all our hard work to be paying some dividends.  We used to be vegetable gardeners – or, more accurately, Barney was the vegetable gardener and I was the flower gardener.  We reached a point with the vegetables a few years ago when we realized we were feeding the local wild life and that very little of the produce was making it to our table.  So sadly, we’ve given up on vegetable gardening.  When I visited my daughter in Indiana about this time last year, her garden was producing an abundant harvest.  We had radishes and carrots and kale – all fresh picked – and wonderful fresh herbs.  She had the kind of zucchini people like Garrison Keillor make jokes about .  All Kerry’s hard work of preparing the soil, planting the seeds with care in just the right place at just the right time, feeding them with fertilizer, keeping them watered and weeded was paying great dividends in her abundant harvest.

As she drove me back to the airport, we passed field after field of corn.  The stalks were about up to my shoulders, I would guess.  “Knee high by the Fourth of July,” Kerry quipped.  It is an expression I hadn’t heard before, one they use in corn country.  “If the corn has reached a height of at least knee level by the Fourth of July,” Kerry explained, “the farmers are pretty sure they will have a good harvest that year.”  Every year the farmers follow the same good farming practices of planting the seeds in the properly prepared field at the right time and giving the seeds all they need to produce a good harvest.   Some years the harvest is abundant; other years the crop fails.  It’s a reminder that despite our best efforts, the growth is ultimately God’s.  We are not in control.

My garden is having a so-so season.  While the only edibles are a few herbs, I consider the flowers to be food for my soul.  Earlier this spring my husband prepared the soil.  I carefully selected the plants I like, the plants that have worked well in the past, plants that are in keeping with my pink, white, and blue color scheme.  At the right time – not before Mother’s Day – I planted them in just the right places – shade-loving plants in the shade and sun-loving plants in the sun. As I labored in the garden that week in May, I did so with the hope that the plants would grow into their full potential.  I have continued to water them, fertilize them, and keep the weeds from choking their growth.  And I have been vigilant about keeping up with that putrid smelling spray that supposedly keeps the deer and rabbits from feasting on them.  But this hasn’t been the best year.  There are lots of very tame deer, a lot of heat, and periods without enough rain.

I must confess to being a frugal gardener.  I want every plant to count and am disappointed when one dies.  I don’t like spending money on plants that don’t bear fruit – or flowers.  And I don’t like spending time and energy on a garden that isn’t going to produce beautiful flowers.  I have discovered a new variety of petunia called supertunia.  True to its name, each plant produces a super amount of flowers.  I especially like those.  And then there are the flowers called cleome, also known as cat’s whiskers.  They pop up everywhere, sprouting from seeds scattered indiscriminately by last summer’s plants.  They grow in sun and in shade, in gardens that have been prepared, in rocky ground, and even in cracks in the sidewalks.  The frugal gardener in me really likes these; I have spent neither money nor labor on them, and they, too, produce an abundance of flowers – and in my color scheme!  There is a two-legged pruner who comes into my garden, hardly deterred by the spray, whose goal is to remove these free-growing plants, claiming they look like marijuana.  I wouldn’t know. I just know I like them.  And I like their hundred-fold harvest.

Like the vegetables in my daughter’s garden, like the corn in the Indiana fields, my flowers, too, are dependent on God for their growth.  I can plant them, I can tend them, but in the end I can’t make them grow.

If I were to ask you to describe your image of God, I wonder what descriptors, what metaphors you would use.  Many of you, I am guessing, would use the metaphor of God as parent.  Some of you might describe God as your friend, your companion.  Others would say you imagine God as a judge.  I wonder how many of us would offer the image of God as a gardener.  It’s not the first – or even the second or the third – metaphor that comes to mind for me, so I am grateful to this Parable of the Sower for offering that image of God.  If I stop to think about it, the image of God as gardener makes perfect sense.  And God is not a frugal gardener.  God is an extravagant gardener.  Recalling the very beginning of our Biblical story, we see God as the gardener, present in the beautiful Garden of Eden.  After creating the garden with the greatest care and then providing everything the people would ever need, God stayed in the garden, keeping company with the people.  We recall, too, that towards the end of Matthew’s Gospel when Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb that first Easter morning she doesn’t recognize her risen Lord at first, mistaking him for the gardener.  There is good ground, solid ground, for thinking of God as a gardener.  I like this image of God as a gardener investing love and labor in us.  As God did with Adam and Eve, God has placed us in this garden we call earth and has given us everything we need to grow.   As all gardeners do, God hopes we will grow to our full potential.  God wants to keep company with us, to nurture us into the full potential – if we will just take the time to keep company with God.

I like this image of God as a gardener investing love and labor in us.  As God did with Adam and Eve, God has placed us in this garden we call earth and has given us everything we need to grow.   As all gardeners do, God hopes we will grow to our full potential.  God wants to keep company with us, to nurture us into the full potential – if we will just take the time to keep company with God.

We encounter in this morning’s Gospel the first of the parables in Matthew.  Up to this point in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus has been using logic, scriptural proofs, sayings, analogies and stories as he has taught.  Now Jesus begins teaching through parables.  The word parable means “to throw alongside.”  A parable uses figurative language to draw analogies from everyday life as it holds one thing alongside another.  Jesus makes use of the comparison to explain, to clarify something or to reveal a new truth.  While a parable may appear to be quite simple, a closer look usually shows it is anything but simple.  When Jesus teaches by parable he chooses something familiar, something from everyday life and casts it beside something else, often in new and unexpected ways.  He does this to open the listeners’ hearts to new truths.

We are cautioned against reading parables as allegory, assigning one meaning to each character or object in the parable.  Such an interpretation of the parable limits its depth and its richness.  It’s not unusual for a parable to hold different meanings for different people, to hold different meanings for the same person at different times.  The Parable of the Sower is unusual in that Jesus does explain it to his disciples – at their request.  He does tell them what each thing mentioned in the parable stands for.  Mark and Luke also record this parable – and Jesus’ interpretation of it.  Perhaps Jesus offered his explanation because it was the first time he was teaching his disciples in the parable method.  Perhaps he offers an interpretation because the disciples – in the verses we skip over this morning – ask him why he teaches in parables.  He wants to be sure those who will carry on his work understand.  And so, he tells them that God is the lavish gardener, sowing the seeds with abandon, without regard to where they land.  The seed, he says, is the Word of the kingdom, the Word of God, the love of God.  The seeds will fall on different soils.  This Parable is sometimes called the Parable of the Soils, and, in Jesus’ explanation, the soils represent the different types of people in whom the seed is sown.  The hearts of those who are not at all open to receiving the word are likened to the path where the birds – or the evil one – snatch the seed away before it has any chance to sprout.   Those whose hearts are like the rocky ground that allows the seed to sprout quickly but not to put down roots, leaving it vulnerable when conditions are unfavorable, are those who readily accept God’s love but who fail to develop any depth of commitment to it.  When distractions or hard times come, they lack the roots to hang on.  But the good soil, the well prepared soil, the well tended soil, receives God’s word, allows it to sprout, and nurtures it to maturity.  The parable, with Jesus’ interpretation, clearly invites us to explore ourselves as the soil, to wonder which soil we are and how we might improve the soil we are in order to produce a better harvest.

While Jesus gave his disciples a very good interpretation of the Parable of the Sower, and while that explanation offers us much food for thought, I don’t think he wanted to limit its potential to just that.  I would encourage us to think of ourselves as the seed as well as the soil.  Each of us contains the potential to sprout and to grow into our full potential.  God, the loving gardener, will nurture our growth.  We might think of ourselves as the seed that is watered at baptism, fertilized (or fed) through Holy Eucharist, nurtured by community, and encouraged all along the way by God, the faithful and loving gardener.

I also find in this parable a call to think of ourselves not just as the soil, not just as the seed, but also as the sower.  We are created in the image of God, and that means we are to live into that image.  If God, our Creator sows seeds, then so must we.  What seeds might I be able to sow?  What seeds might you be called to sow?  And will we have the courage – and the generosity – to sow them with abandon, willing to risk scattering them in places and in people who seem to us to have little potential of producing a decent harvest?  Have you ever wondered who Albert Einstein’s math teacher was?  Have you ever wondered who Billy Graham’s Sunday school teacher was?  Who was Babe Ruth’s baseball coach?  I wonder whether they knew about the harvest that came from their labor.

Who knows what the yield might be when we dare to scatter seeds?  When reporters interviewed Boris Yeltsin, they asked him what gave him the courage to stand firm during the fall of communism in the former USSR.  Surprisingly, he credited an electrician from Poland named Lech Walesa who started the fall of communism in his country.  When Walesa was interviewed and asked what inspired him, he said it was the civil rights movement in the United States led by Martin Luther King, Jr.  When King was asked what inspired him, he said it was the courage of one woman – Rosa Parks – who refused to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus.  Would it be too much of a stretch to say that it was the courage of one small woman in the South that brought down communism?  Seeds are like that.  They can be very tiny, but they can grow incredibly large.

Thomas Merton cautions us that the Parable of the Sower is not about the occasional moment when God or a faithful Christian sows a seed about God.  Rather, everything at every moment of every part of our lives is a seed suffused with life-giving, spirited import.   How does your garden grow?  What kind of gardeners are you?  Amen.

 

The Rev. Jacqueline C. Thomson

St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church, Herndon, VA

July 9, 2017