Sermon Mark 4:26-34 17 June 2018 Proper 6 Year B

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         God help me, I was going to preach something safe and comforting today. I thought I could play it safe and say a lot of comfortable things about how we need to let God do what God does. All we have to do is plant the seeds. Or with the second parable, I could talk about how God takes a tiny mustard seed and makes a huge plant out of it. The Gospel stories for today can certainly be preached that way. We don’t even have to think of them as parables. We can make them safe by turning them into fables or allegories.

A fable about the mustard seed could be interpreted like this: Large things can grow from something very small. An allegory about the mustard seed could be interpreted like this: If your faith is small and you nurture it, it will do the same thing the mustard seed did. But parables, especially the parables Jesus tells, are neither safe nor easy. Parables are designed to have multiple interpretations, and multiple ways of twisting our brains around. Parables make us think, and oftener than not, disturb the status quo by making us think about things we’d rather not think about at all.

Parables are intended to mess with our normal way of thinking. Parables are intended to be subversive in a variety of ways. And parables get inside our heads and cause us to think differently, to sometimes get us so frustrated we don’t know quite what to do about them. But, if we’ll stay with them and keep thinking about them, parables can be life changing. We might be transformed before we know it. Maybe that’s what Jesus had in mind. You think?

         There is nothing wrong with interpreting parables as allegories or fables. Interpreting them that way can say some really important things about what we believe about the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God may not be easy to spot. The kingdom of God may appear really tiny but end up being large in influence or size or scope when we least expect it. And yet, if we treat these parables like parables, we might begin to look at them differently. And, when we look at things differently we may not always be safe.

         Suppose we focus on what a very odd thing a mustard seed really is. Some varieties of mustard seeds are used as spices, some are used as medicine, and some are used as food. But in general, in a field or garden, in Jesus’ time, they were considered weeds, and noxious weeds at that. Dangerous weeds, uncontrollable weeds that can choke out other plants and take over an entire area. In Jesus’ time, mustard would not be purposely grown in someone’s garden. Instead, it would grow unchecked in a fallow field, or an open uncultivated area.

         If you’re a lawn guy or gal, or a gardener or a farmer, select your least favorite weed. (Pause) Do you know that in some places there are laws that say certain weeds must be controlled? Do you know there is such a thing as the Ohio Noxious Weed List? Which, by the way, if you’re interested, you can hop on the conveniently named and easy to remember website: invasive.org and search for Ohio.

A few of the noxious weeds listed in Ohio are Johnson grass, musk thistle, Canada thistle, giant hogweed, and of course there’s the appropriately named mile-a-minute weed. And yes, wild mustard is on the list. If you’re more familiar with garden-variety weeds, there’s the mowers’ favorite: dandelions, and of course there are a host of other weeds that seem to grow stronger every time you mow them down. Most of those weeds aren’t considered noxious but sometimes when you have the mower out you think they ought to be.

         I find all this interesting, because it seems to me that’s what Jesus is doing here. He’s talking about the growth of the kingdom of God as a noxious weed that is difficult and impossible to control.

Now do you think that’s a comforting image? But maybe that’s a part of what Jesus is doing with that obnoxious and noxious mustard seed. Maybe that’s part of what Jesus is saying about the mustard that won’t go away and keeps on growing unchecked. Maybe part of what Jesus is asking us to hear is that the growth of the kingdom of God can be annoying and invasive and may involve people who can’t be controlled easily. People who may not want to do things the way we’ve always done them here.

         When the kingdom of God grows unchecked and really takes root, undesirable things we’ve never thought of begin to happen. Perhaps even undesirable people show up. Maybe that’s one of the reasons we find unchecked growth uncomfortable or even threatening. We can’t control it or shape it to our image of what “nice” church should look like, or sound like, or be like. It isn’t safe anymore.

Maybe what Jesus has in mind this morning is something other than a nice little parable fit for public consumption. Maybe instead Jesus is offering us a subversive, dangerous and risky plot to transform us and change the church and the world. Are we up for that? AMEN.

The Rev. Nicolette Papanek

 ©2018

Sermon Proper 5 Mark 3:20-35 10 June 2018 Year B

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         What’s your family like? Happy? Sad? Both? We’ve all absorbed the idea that families have “dynamics,” as therapists, social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists will tell us. At lot of family dynamics talk is based in the negative. What is wrong with this family? Who is at fault? Who is the designated patient?

         Long before Doctor Phil asked the question, a therapist by the name of Virginia Satir, used to ask the question, “How is that working for you?” I knew Virginia, and I believe she discovered that for most families, the way change occurred was not by identifying how sick or dysfunctional people were. Instead, Virginia gave families opportunities to reflect on how something wasn’t working. A humble and loving person, Virginia offered families a method or perhaps way of being that allowed them room to move, to discover again what did work well and how to do it.

         Then there’s Jesus, who in this morning’s Gospel asks us to redefine family. He asks us to move to a different definition of family. He asks to open ourselves to how else “family” might be defined.

Three main things define most families. I think that’s one of the reasons Jesus was quick to differentiate what he meant by family.

·      First, Jesus knew, as did Virginia, that families are closed systems.

·      Second, new members have a means test for entry.

·      Third, you have to work at it to get in.

Here’s one way in which a family is a closed system. Even the body language is telling because it’s usually like this. (I folded my arms across my chest in a protective posture.) “When we were growing up my brother and I fought like cats and dogs. But boy, let anyone from outside threaten us, and we were a united front!” That sounds like a closed system except to existing family members.

Here’s number two: the means test. The way “means test” is usually defined in our society is by financial means, or money. Specifically, the money or lack thereof to qualify for some sort of government assistance.  In a family, a means test is usually based on background, ethnicity, education, behavior, and a host of other things the person trying to get in may not know because they are unspoken. “My mother-in-law never really had much time for me until I learned to make friend chicken the way she and her mother did. How was I to know? I’d never even eaten friend chicken until I married her son?”

Number three: Working at it to get in. You may think Jesus was defining entry as a mother, sister, or brother as working your way in by doing the will of God. Instead he knew that God’s grace is what draws us in and keeps us in. It’s the power of that grace and the desire to live in that grace that draws us to what the Victorians called “good works” or what the Gospel this morning calls, “doing the will of God.”

Some years ago I was serving a parish in Kentucky and Bishop Eugene Robinson gave a talk at a neighboring church. You need to understand that for him, a simple talk involved danger. He wore a bulletproof vest because at the time he was getting daily death threats. I regret to say some of those threats were from Episcopalians. The Kentucky State Police surrounded the church. It was horrifying to realize we had to walk between rows of officers to get into the church.

What that experience did was make me think about today’s Gospel passage from Mark. I think of one of the things Bishop Robinson said that day. I’m paraphrasing a bit, but here’s the gist of it. “In the church we are continually called to draw our circle wider. What Jesus does is to help us remember we’re still drawing circles. Some people are still on the inside and some on the outside.”

What kind of circles do we draw? Are there insiders and outsiders? Who might be inside? Who might be outside? What happens if we open the circle wide? What happens if we erase the circle completely and let anyone come inside?

If we believe Jesus calls us to join him, then who are our brothers and sisters and mothers? AMEN.

        

The Rev. Nicolette Papanek

 ©2018

Sermon Proper 4 Mark 2:23 - 3:6 3 June 2018 Year B

         One of my favorite books is The Sabbath, by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Rabbi Heschel was known as a scholar, writer, theologian, and activist. In his book, The Sabbath, he writes with loving precision about the Sabbath and its purpose in the life of human beings. In the busy world we inhabit today, he writes things that make us pause for thought and perhaps encounter a “small Sabbath” for a moment or two, as our brains slow down to absorb what he writes.

         In the introduction to Rabbi Heschel’s books his daughter Susannah Heschel writes movingly of how her family observed with the joy the weekly Shabbat, or Sabbath. She quotes him as saying, “We are within the Sabbath rather than the Sabbath being within us.”

         So it must have been for the disciples in the grain fields and in the temple with Jesus. And, it must have been a bit of a shock to the disciples and the Pharisees to hear, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath; so the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

         Previously, with the forbiddens and the shall nots, people tried to win God’s favor with their Sabbath keeping. In addition, Rabbi Jesus says the same thing Rabbi Heschel says. They both tell us our experience of Sabbath does not come into being on Saturday or Sunday, or whatever day is our Sabbath. Instead, our Sabbath experience only becomes profound, whole, and holy, by how we behave the other six days of the week.

         Jesus’ demonstration of Sabbath underlines what we can do the other six days by his defiance of the written and unwritten rules of Sabbath.

         Focus, compassion, healing, truth speaking, and most of all love demonstrated by our compassionate acts, are what creates a Sabbath in which we can rest.

When we recklessly spend the six days and then the Sabbath itself, we have no room for anything but ourselves and perhaps a little time for those closest to us.

This is a narrow and circumscribed life. It is a life in which we have no focus because we are too busy.

It is a life in which we have no time for compassion because we are too occupied with our own passions.

It is a life in which we miss opportunities for healing because though we live in a broken and hurting world, having no Sabbath relief leaves little space for God to direct us toward our own healing and the healing of others. It allows us to so respond even if it that need comes begging on our Sabbath.

We are liars when we try to tell ourselves we are speaking the truth and we know we are only speaking what is popular or what we have been told. Our Sabbath is empty because we have not taken Sabbath moments to reflect on the repercussions of what we say before we open our mouths.

The compassionate acts of love we are called to do are lost when we take no time to pause and really listen to how God is calling us. Our own Sabbath may need to be broken open so we can hear what is going on inside us and in others whose lives we touch.

Our own Sabbath may need to be broken open so we can hear and see how God is expanding us to let in more God into those empty spaces Sabbath creates.

A friend of mine has a favorite bumper strip that has become mine as well. It reads, “Jesus is Coming: Look Busy.” The longer I have reflected on that and laughed about it, the more I see how “looking busy” or sometimes even “being busy” may not be what God is calling us to do every day.

Perhaps instead, God wants us to open ourselves to the divine purposes of focus, compassion, healing, truth telling and love. Jesus was able to offer these things on the Sabbath because he kept the Sabbath holy and unstained. As Rabbi Heschel would say it, “Strict adherence to the laws regulating Sabbath observance don’t suffice; the goal is creating the Sabbath as a foretaste of paradise. The Sabbath is a metaphor for paradise and a testimony to God’s presence; in our prayers, we anticipate a messianic era that will be a Sabbath, and each Shabbat prepares us for that experience: ‘Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath…one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.” AMEN.

The Rev. Nicolette Papanek

 ©2018

Sermon Trinity Sunday John 3:1-17 27 May 2018 Year B

         This week I finally got a chance to listen to our Presiding Bishop’s homily at the Royal Wedding. I’d heard a couple of people say it was too long, so I was interested in not only what he said, but in how long he actually preached. Turns out – through the miracle of technology – the posted time was 13 minutes and maybe a few seconds.

         After listening to Presiding Bishop Curry’s homily, I think I understand why some people thought it went on too long. It was about love, and he quoted a lot of scripture. Now those are two things that make many Episcopalians uncomfortable.

We’d rather “like” something on Facebook or say we really like something a lot, or say that we love chocolate than say we love God or have fallen in love with Jesus or love the unexpected way the Holy Spirit moves in our lives.

And as far as quoting scripture is concerned, many Episcopalians don’t know enough to quote it accurately anyway, so why do something that might embarrass you in front of others? In addition, if we do quote scripture we might be mistaken for one of those evangelicals and that would certainly be unseemly at best, and terrifying at worst. People might actually expect something of us.

So what is it about love and what does love have to do with the Trinity?

First of all, the Trinity is a relationship of love. Three in one so closely intertwined that it, or they, are one. Confusing, yes, but imaginable in a variety of ways. All the ways we’ve heard about: the cloverleaf, the interlocking circles, the relationship between or inside, if you prefer, the Trinity itself or perhaps themselves. See? I told you it could be confusing.

Because the Trinity is a relationship, though, it is easy to see the relationship is characterized by love. Love exists within the Trinity that radiates outward and warms and lights the world and everything in it. We were made by the power of love when God created us. The love of the Trinity created us and joins us together to the world.

In our small part of the world today, at the 8:00 am service, we baptized Kyle into the great love of the Trinity. It is our love and the love of others that will surround and sustain him as the human manifestation of the love the Holy Trinity bears for us and believes for us, even when we cannot believe it ourselves.

God’s love comes with a vision of how God intends things to be and how they were created in the beginning.  Love has an internal beauty of design that tells us this: is not something we keep, love is something we give away. The more we give away, the more we shall receive.

Knowing this, we have two golden moments this morning. The first, which unfortunately all of you at the 10:15 am service did not get to witness, was Kyle’s Baptism. At that service, in the name of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Kyle was adopted through God’s grace and love into the inheritance that was his even before he was created.

The second golden moment is here and now and we must, yes, must, go out to meet it. The world is hungry, nay, starving for love. Why else would there be more Internet hits registered than on anything else for Presiding Bishop Curry’s Royal Wedding homily? We will have people who will seek out the Episcopal Church to find that love and see if it’s really here.

We know how to love. We know how to love. Let us pray for the strength, wisdom, and power to share that love with those who are starving for love. We know how to love. AMEN.       

The Rev. Nicolette Papanek

 ©2018