Welcome to my sermon archives.
When a tree falls into a creek, it might block the flow of water for a time, but water finds a way. It keeps moving and eventually the tree becomes a part of the flow.
So it is with God’s care for us…
I don’t want you to panic. I’m not going to ask you to make a big addition to your Christmas plans, and I’m not going to ask you to take anything away from your Christmas plans. I’m just asking you to stay awake.
The disciples ask Jesus to explain the parable of the weeds in the field. And I can see why. If I had been a disciple hearing this parable for the first time, I would think, “I’m wheat, right? I’m following Jesus, so I’m not a weed. Who are the weeds? Is that guy a weed? I bet he is. What did Jesus say we should do about weeds again?” I would be so busy locating myself in this story, and trying to avoid the fires of hell, that I would not hear the two brief parables that follow.
Grief is like a feral cat. She doesn’t come when I call, and she doesn’t stay away if I ask her to leave me alone. She shows up whenever and wherever she chooses. When I see her coming, I never know if it’s going to be a friendly encounter, or if I’m going to spend the rest of the day soothing scratches and bite marks she left behind.
Anytime we choose to hide the truth, or to present something other than the whole truth, it should give us pause, and we should ask ourselves, why? And our answer to that question needs to be brutally honest.
I’ve seen a bandaid save a trip to the zoo. I’ve seen a bandaid save a day at the beach. I watched that kindergartener on the playground get his bandaid, get up, and walk right into school. This may seem tricky, or even deceitful, but it’s not. When I put a bandaid on a child who doesn’t have a cut or a scrape, but who feels like they are not ok, I am helping them to understand what is already true. They are, in fact, ok. They are taken care of. They are good.
When it comes to preaching, I value authenticity. I try never to preach from someone else’s experiences. It’s unusual for me to share stories that aren’t from my own life. So, in order to remain authentic, I need you to know that I’ve never been in jail. Yet.
Acknowledging grief and loss before God is an act of faith. When we do this, we testify to the truth that no part of us is inaccessible to God, and we are loved as whole people. Offering our pain and disappointment to God can be heavy, but it can also leave us feeling lighter. It can make us cry, and it can also make us laugh. It can put us in touch with our lostness, and also make us realize we’ve been found. It can do all of those things at the same time.
At my first appointment my Physical Therapist, Trey, asked me at least one hundred questions, and then moved my arm, neck, back and shoulder all over including making it hurt on purpose, and then asking follow up questions about the pain. After an hour of this he explained what I’d done - a labral tear in my shoulder. And I said, “Oh, so if I tore a muscle I just need a sling right? I should stop using it so it can heal?” He literally laughed at me. Then through his n95 mask he said “It’s not a muscle. It’s connective tissue, and the last thing you should do is stop using it.”
This weirdness means that God is here. God is doing things, whether you are ready for them or not. God will surprise you, and God will use you to surprise others, and in recognizing God at work you will find salvation. If you were looking for anything clearer, like a sign that you should go this way instead of that way, or plant this crop instead of that crop, or worship in one place or another, that’s not what’s happening now. God is here. That’s what it means.
While the Dunning-Kruger effect essentially lies to you about the state that you are in, these statement, often called the Beatitudes, tell the truth. Life is hard. Following Jesus is hard. Anyone who says it’s not is trying to sell you something. But I think most of us are here this morning not because we have escaped the hardness of life, but because we have experienced it, and we know that there’s blessedness in the midst of it. We know that what Jesus says is true.
I hope you have some people in your life who are easy to love, but if that’s all you’ve got then you may have Kondo-ed your life too carefully. I’m not sure you can actually follow Jesus if you don’t have any people that you don’t like in your life, because so much of what Jesus tells us to do, and to be, is about how we respond to people who are hard for us to love. That is a critical piece of how we practice our faith.
