I have always had difficulty with the idea of salvation. The word itself comes from a Latin root meaning “to be made whole.” From before seminary to the present day, I wonder, “How are we saved?”, “What must we do to be saved?”, “What happens when we are saved?”, and “Does this kind of salvation really matter?” If you want to dive into some of these questions, then join me for Sunday adult forum starting on the 18th when we read the book Going to Hell, Getting Saved, and What Jesus Actually Said About It.”

Here in the buckle of the Bible belt, we know there are huge churches placing great emphasis on the concept of salvation. One person told me years ago that in order to be saved, I had to stand in front of the congregation on a Sunday and tell them that Jesus was my personal Lord and Savior. When I heard that, I began to look on that formula for salvation: kind of like eating a Twinkie – overly sweet on the outside, gooey on the inside, and not very satisfying in the long run.

September is “Hunger Action Month.” Recently Nathan Adair, an MBA student at a university in London, decided to experience for himself what 1 billion people around the globe do every day. They live on food costing one dollar a day or less. Mr. Adair decided to eat for an entire month on what could be purchased for $30. In the middle of his experiment he noted, “When you are really hungry, one raisin is like eating an ice cream sundae. Twenty-five-cent canned vegetable soup tastes like it came from a five-star restaurant.”

In the other direction from here, San Francisco chef Karl Wilder was challenged by the manager of a local food bank to “Take the food stamp challenge”, and live on food provided only by the amount of money food stamp recipients receive, or $4.32 a day in California. This diet is luxurious in comparison to the dollar a day food ration a billion people receive around the globe. As a professional chef, Wilder carefully managed his food stamp budget diet so that he ate healthy, nutritional meals. He ended up taking the challenge for nearly two months.

At 5’ 4” with a 29” waist, Wilder lost seven pounds during the two month challenge in spite of managing his calorie and nutritional intake carefully. Can you imagine what people who do not have graduate training in nutrition do on $4.32 a day? What they do is to purchase inexpensive non-nutritious junk food that is high in calories and sodium. The three hundred pound ten year olds you see walking around town are living on food stamp budgets or even less.

Now we can talk about politics and government programs all day long, but we are in a Christian church and we need to shift the conversation to “What does our faith have to do with hunger locally and internationally?” and “What are we called to do about it here and now?”

In his letter to the Romans, Paul says, “Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor.” So the basic question boils down to this: right here in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where many of us have more than enough to eat, is it right to allow others to starve or not have enough to eat? Love does no wrong to a neighbor. If we say that it is right to allow other residents of this town to starve or live in what is called “food insecure” conditions, then we do not love our neighbor. The Grace Episcopal Tee shirts we wore last week proclaimed to the community that we “love our neighbors as ourselves.” Can we walk the talk?

As long as we are not working towards a solution at least to local hunger, are we really loving our neighbor as ourselves? As a first step we need to look outside the bubbles we live in.

Reflecting on his dollar a day diet, the London MBA student said, “I hope people choose to look outside their bubbles and realize that this very moment, kids are digging through trash looking for food, that children are being sold into slavery and prostitution this very minute, that widows are being spit on in the street because they are seen as worthless.” He continued, “I want them to realize that the Western way of life is luxurious compared to most. I have been very blessed in this life, and I want to give back as much as possible. We can’t take anything with us.”

You may be thinking this is a sermon about food, hunger, and feeding people, but it is not. This is a sermon about the love that flows from our baptismal promise. In that promise we agreed to “respect the freedom and dignity of every human being.” In effect we promise to love others as we love ourselves. As Paul says, we “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.”

Jesus posed our response to his gospel in black and white terms. “He that is not against us is for us.” Either we are moving towards a solution on hunger or we are not. Either we are living the Good News of Jesus Christ by loving our neighbor OR we are just taking up space.

Yes, Grace Episcopal Church has two very good meals programs and we should continue and expand those programs. But take a trip with me to and dream much bigger than where we are today. Dream about feeding not hundreds, but thousands in this county. Dream about empowering others with skills, knowledge, and hope. The first two steps on this journey are the things we need to carry us through to the end: compassion and gratitude. These are the underpinnings of real Christian love.

Suppose for a minute that we could leverage our own Grace Church financial contributions by obtaining grants. All we need is a grant writer. We could develop a community garden across the street. We could develop much more permanent cooking and food distribution facilities. We could partner with other churches and local resources to build programs that not only feed people but help them understand good nutrition and change lives as a result.

Suppose for a minute that we could engage a wider segment of the community in helping us. In a sense we would be living out the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 – every week. Isn’t this what the Gospel compels us to do? Isn’t this loving our neighbor as ourselves?

Suppose we leaned back on our proud 29 year history of a GED education program and we decided that teaching people is also feeding them, and that education is essential to get this community out of its current doldrums.

It may take us two years, three years, or even five years to set all this up. Some of us who start such an ambitious dream may not get to see it to completion, but is that a reason not to start? In the near future we may find the opportunities for facilities we never dreamed of. We may find that once a few engaged and compassionate people start, that people from all over will want to come help. We may find that our youth will finally make the connection that this strange faith of ours that we talk about in worship on Sunday actually translates directly into helping others. We may find contributions beyond our wildest dreams.

This is the United States of America in the 21st century. We should not be seeing 300 pound malnourished ten year olds. We should not be seeing people getting their food from restaurant dumpsters. We should not have children born to malnourished mothers in Muskogee.

But we do.

All the resources we need to address these issues are either in this church or connected to it socially. All we need is a couple of compassionate people who want their faith to make a difference. All we need is to look outside our bubble and start with gratitude, saying, “I have been very blessed in this life. I want to give back as much as possible.”

After all, wherever you are going next, you can’t take it with you.

Today is national “Welcome Back Sunday.”

Welcome Back!!?? Have people been away for a vacation?

Can you imagine the Israelites in hot pursuit by the Egyptian army? Chariots and horses are gaining on them. God is out in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. All of a sudden the pillar of cloud just disappears and a voice comes from heaven (in Hebrew of course), “Sorry, I’m on vacation. Check back with me in a month.”

Some people are actually comforted to know however that God really doesn’t take vacations. The church does not go on vacation. We are always here and that is a good thing.

Today is the day we talk in plain language about the nuts and bolts of this parish. I’ll tell you the Good News first: The last shall be first and the first shall be last … and the harvest is plenty but the laborers are few.

It’s really all good news but some folks are perplexed and even concerned about the situation we are in right now. Look back at the Israelites in the desert. The whole congregation of the Israelites (200,000) complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, “If only we had died in Egypt. We may have been living with uncultured pagan people, but at least we had food to eat, but you have brought us out to this barren place to kill us with hunger.”

Moses risked his own life when he killed the Egyptian guard. He did not want to lead this ragtag band of Hebrew speakers. He tried to tell God that he had a speech impediment and could not articulate things well. God in turn said, “No problem. Your brother Aaron will speak on your behalf.”

With the Egyptian army about to close in on them, God intervenes again and they cross the Red Sea as if on dry land. The sea closes in on Pharaoh’s chariots and they all perish. The whole assembly of Israel did not have a very difficult decision when they chose to follow Moses out of the country. It was either follow the guy who had funny speech or be killed by the army.

By the time we get to today’s reading, the Israelites have been wandering in the desert long enough to get very hungry and wonder just where in the heck are they going. Some of them want to return to their days as slaves in Egypt which they consider to be better than their time in the hot desert sun.

Every leader, if they are doing their job, will encounter resistance which comes in two forms. Overt resistance is what Moses experienced. People complained directly about their situation. Covert resistance can be more subtle, ranging from secret plotting against the leader to just saying no to everything that comes along.

One of the first pitfalls people encounter with new leadership is assuming “We now have a great leader. Now we can return to the good old days the way it used to be.” This is a natural assumption, but it is wrong. No matter how good your leader may be, the future does not contain the good old days that this church or any church can return to. EVERYTHING has changed and continues to change rapidly. Grace Church can never return to the 1980s, or 1960s, or whatever period was the golden era. We MUST reinvent ourselves and with God; we will create a new golden era.

Reinventing ourselves involves change and risk taking. Not all change succeeds. Not all change is good. But without change there is NO growth. All churches that resist change fall into decline. So we must embrace change knowing that not everything is going to be helpful. We must be willing to laugh at what we tried that didn’t work out. For example, last year we tried “This Church Rocks” with contemporary music on Sunday nights. That effort did not succeed. What we learned from it is that promoting Grace Church activities in the Muskogee community is nearly impossible especially without a sign or any attractive presence at 6th and Broadway.

For Episcopalians change poses an even greater conundrum. How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is “You can’t change that light bulb. My grandmother gave that light bulb.” We really like things to be stable with fixed form prayers, worship, music, etc. But what good is stability when you are declining?

How do we preserve the best of our traditions, Episcopal culture, and worship styles while changing into something new, exciting, growth-filled, attractive to outsiders, and sustainable?

First I need to convince you of the urgency of our situation: We are getting our financial accounting and management into excellent shape for the first time in many years. We can now see clearly what we need to do. A year ago I was convinced that modest growth of four to six new people a year along with modest increases in income would keep us going. Now I can tell you that will not work. We need to grow in attendance, in financial contributions, and in ministries. We need to grow in time, talent, and treasure. We have about two years to make this happen.

How will we grow? What will we become? Where are we going?

You will grow Grace Church through your network of friends and contacts. I know many of you have invited friends already. While the building is being reconstructed in 2012 we need to be planning programs for the following year that will be very attractive to those outside the church. When we have attractive buildings, attractive programs, and personal invitations, more people will come.

What will we become? I can stay at Grace until I retire. I have plenty of ideas, energy, and drive. But I cannot do everything. Right now we need help with pastoral care and visitation of the sick and shut in. We need office volunteers even for just two hours a week to answer the phones. Nearly every ministry of Grace Church needs additional help and even leadership.

I know that many of you already do a lot for God at Grace Church. To all of you I can say “Thank you.” Also, look again at the Israelites in the desert. God did not feed them because they complained. God fed them to show them God’s power and how their faith made all the difference. So I tell you, “It’s hot out here in the desert. It’s a long ride. Hang in there. Your faith will make all the difference.”

Where are we going? What Muskogee lacks is a religious institution that is open to everyone without condition, and that encourages people to think for themselves. We do that very well. What we need to do is organize, advertise, gear up, and promote Grace Church as THE place for thoughtful people that accepts everyone.

Grace Church was the fourth church established in Muskogee. We are not the biggest church today. Jesus tells us however that the last shall become first.

Please attend the ministry fair. Roll up your sleeves. Get involved. Grace Episcopal Church in Muskogee has a fabulous future. Your faith and your participation will make all the difference.

Having a hearing impairment can be fun at times. I have what my wife calls “creative hearing,” that is, the words I think I heard may not be anything remotely similar to what was said. Occasionally it can be pretty funny. The same is true for children as they learn their native language. One time at our church in California, the processional was Lead on, O King Eternal, the same as we sang today. As I passed a pew, I could distinctly hear a child singing enthusiastically at the top of his young voice, “Lead on O Kinky Turtle.” It made me smile and pause for a second as I wondered what a Kinky Turtle might look like.

But isn’t that the way we all want to sing in church? We want to sing enthusiastically. We want to sing with everyone else. We want to sing stuff that makes us happy, regardless of whether it is about divine kings or bent turtles.

In a small town trying to do traditional high church Episcopal music, we are challenged on so many sides you can get dizzy thinking about it. Like many of you, I was raised with high church Anglican music. It is what I know and love. It is for me the norm for good music in church. I married a Roman Catholic, and thought I was doomed to guitars and bad music for the rest of my life.

When he was in Athens, the high point of Greek culture and learning, the apostle Paul said, “I must be all things to all people.” By that he meant that he must talk to the Athenians in their own culture and language in order to win them over to the Good News of God in Jesus Christ. Paul did not try to impose a foreign language, culture, or music on the Athenians. Instead he showed them how their temple to an unknown god was really the God of the Good News in Jesus Christ. He met them on their own terms.

I often look at the church trade magazines and shudder when I read about theatre seats and “entertainment industry” video displays. I break out in hives thinking about church as entertainment. But then I think about Paul and the Athenians. He converted hundreds or thousands by meeting them on their own turf. How many do we convert by forcing people to sing music that is as strange and foreign to them as Dixieland would be to an African tribe?

Is there anything wrong with your church if it is entertaining to newcomers while they are slowly won over to the gospel of Christ? What about music? One kind of music may make one generation or existing church members comfortable and happy. Another kind of music may be attractive to people who know nothing else about the Episcopal Church. Is one of these musical styles “right” and the other “wrong”, or could they simply appeal to two different audiences?

Part of the genius of our Anglican tradition is that it is broad in every scope. We can embrace polar opposites in theology, in worship, in views on human sexuality, in politics, and even in music. We do not force people to do or think any particular thing. We invite them to use their own hearts and minds. Of all the things that make us Episcopalians, this is the primary gift we bring to the people of Muskogee – a place where people can think about their faith.

So I ask you, do you feel good about the fact that our teenagers come and ask all kinds of questions about their faith and they are encouraged to explore and challenge the prevailing views of their friends? Do you feel good about the fact that our adult forum is studying a book titledGoing to Hell, Getting Saved, and what Jesus Actually Said About it? Do you feel good knowing that this book is essentially banned in Muskogee because it clashes with the predominant views on the Bible from other churches in town? You can only buy it here on-line. Do you feel good knowing that ANY human being who walks through this door will be treated with dignity and respect?

We have what is called a “lively faith.” Yes we have a relationship with Jesus and yes, our understanding of scripture includes more questions than answers. It is the questions, the thinking, and wrestling with scripture that can be off-putting to some people who think they need to come to church to be told what to think; they want a step by step formula for salvation. But I guarantee you, there are many other people out there who avoid coming to church because they have questions and they do not want to be told what to think. Do we have room for them here?

Where will Grace Episcopal Church be in three to five years? I see a church nearly twice our size today. I see a church that continues the best of music and Anglican worship while at the same time offering another Sunday service alternative with more contemporary music. I see a much larger, more active youth group. I see us more involved with education in Muskogee. I see us going on mission trips, doing more fund raisers, being recognized in town, and with full parking lots on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings.

Do you feel good about who we are and what we do? Do you feel good about where we are going? Can you see the future with me? Can you roll up your sleeves and help make it happen? This is what Paul meant when he said to the Philippians, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” because God is at work in you.

On Easter this year I studied the church advertising page in the Muskogee Phoenix. I counted 33 Baptist churches and 42 non-Baptist churches advertising. Just on the basis of that rough count, 42% of the churches around us are Baptist. Now there is nothing wrong with the Baptist church. Our Episcopal tradition stands in sharp contrast to the Baptist tradition, so today on the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin, we could use a little refresher to help us understand and appreciate our differences with some of the other church traditions around us.

A few months ago someone noted our devotional candles in the back and they wondered as to why we would do such a “Roman Catholic thing.” There are many different purposes, intentions and meanings behind devotional candles, but I can assure you that devotional candles are not the unique prerogative of Roman Catholic tradition. Even Methodists and Lutherans can have them. Also in the realm of things Roman Catholic, did I mention that in our Anglican-Episcopal tradition we have a kind of Rosary called “Anglican Prayer Beads?” Did I mention that some Episcopal parishes in the NE United States have confessional booths and statues? Again, we might want to understand where the Episcopal Church fits between Baptists at one end and Roman Catholics on the other. We are in the middle and I like to think that we have the best of both.

How did the wider church through the ages develop such a tradition around Mary? For example, Mary is referred to as a virgin, yet there is the question of the brothers of Jesus. In another case, the Gospel of Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14, saying the familiar words from Advent, “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called ‘Immanuel’.” Jerome who translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin in the 400s later acknowledged that he knowingly used “virgin” for the Hebrew word “young maiden,” because he was preserving the existing tradition about the Virgin Mary. There is another word in Hebrew that ALWAYS means virgin yet that word is not in the original Hebrew source text – only the word for “young girl” or “young maiden.”

The doctrines of the virginity of Mary and even the “perpetual virginity of Mary” before, during, and after the birth of Jesus apparently were well established long before Jerome produced the Latin Bible in the early 400s. Miraculous and virgin births were important to major world religions centuries before Jesus. Even the birth of the Roman Emperor Augustus was reported to have resulted from a virginal pairing of his mother and Apollo. You notice by now that we have neither denied nor accepted this doctrine. Scripture is just not clear on this matter.

There is another speculation about the development of Mary in the church. By the third century, the church was led by an exclusively male hierarchy. Although little is written about it, the feminine aspects of God needed to be integrated into the church of male priests and an even more masculine-centric Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The elevation of Mary to “God-bearer” and prayers directed to her as healer and life-giver would be a natural development for the official church of the Empire as it waged war and took human lives throughout the world.

Regardless of your beliefs about Mary, the Song of Mary you heard from Luke contains a true miracle that YOU/WE can participate in today. When Mary says that God has “looked with favor upon his lowly servant”, the Greek text does NOT imply “lowly” as “humility.” It is about POVERTY. Mary is dirt poor, pregnant, and unmarried. This social status in her world would be equivalent to the kids who scavenge the giant garbage dump in Honduras. She is at the bottom of the social ladder. If we saw Mary on the street, we would scurry by her, trying not to notice or look her in the eye. She too is wretched and despised; rejected by her status as unmarried and pregnant. And yet for this unlikely, impoverished, dirty, desperate young woman, God has chosen to change her status forever. She will give birth to the son of God.

Mary sings a song of liberation not just for her but for all of the world’s poor and despised. Because of the child she carries, the faithful poor will have hope where there was no hope before. God will give them a future where they had no future before. She sings a song of justice brought about by God who has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts and who has brought down the powerful from their thrones and who has lifted UP the lowly; God who has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.

By the world’s standards, we are ALL rich. HOW can we sing Mary’s song when we are not like her? We are not poor. We are not dirty and desperate, and we are in good social standing. Yet Mary sings of God who raises up those at the bottom of the ladder. Can Mary’s God be our God? Can Mary’s song be our song?

Realization of God’s justice means that for those of us who are rich (and we are all rich), it will cost us. Can we really praise this God Mary sings about?

Her song sums it up. If we who are rich cannot praise this God, then we are empty and we will be sent away.

So I ask you who have been watching recent events in our nation and the world with justifiable anxiety; what does the future look like given our godless politics and self-centered businesses? Do you see hope for many people? Does the future you see make you proud or anxious?

Mary’s God and Mary’s song gives ALL of us hope. God’s future and God’s promise to us will cost us. But so will the future the politicians and business leaders have in store for us. The choice we have before us is not about cost, it is about faith.

Mary’s God will raise ALL of us up: the homeless, the uneducated, those living in rough places, the disabled, those in prison, and the rest of us who have wealth but need a purpose. Mary’s God will raise ALL of us up if we to whom much has been given will learn how to join with Mary and the lowly of the world. And from their perspective at the bottom of the ladder we need to learn to look up and say with boldness to God, “May it be done to us according to your word.”

When we can truly join with Mary and the poor of the world and when we can submit to God in her way, then, as the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed, God will give us “hope and a future.”

In order to obtain animals to put on our cardboard boat AKA Noah’s Ark we put out the call for people to contribute stuffed animals. One person brought a bag of stuffed animals and on top of it were several cute little sheep. My dog took a liking to them and curled up around the bag as if he were guarding them. I told our administrator that “All we needed was a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin in the bag and we would have ‘dyslexic scripture.’” She looked at me the way she does when I say something crazy. “You ready?” I asked. She nodded and I said, “Behold the lamb of dog that taketh away the gin of the world.”

I want to thank everyone who helped build the boat, race the boat and come out & cheer – We had 200 person-hours of labor building the boat. We had forty people show up over the weekend to cheer us on. THANK YOU!

[Show trophies – 3rd place in two events.]

We learned a lot. We know much more how to build the boat, how to race it, and how to promote it. Next year we are going to clean house!

When was the last time Grace Church brought home trophies? 1960-70s.

When did we install these memorial windows? 1920-40s.

The old trophies came from the children of the people memorialized in the windows. Our new trophies are going to come from the people here now.

Churches go through natural cycles of birth, near death, and rebirth. I think we are in a period of rebirth right now. We are going to score a lot more trophies. As we sing in the hymn All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name: “Go spread your trophies at his feet and crown him Lord of all.” Here are the first two trophies, Jesus.

But as I watched the events of Friday and Saturday transpire, I realized how much about the life of an individual and the life of the church we were seeing played before us. It was almost like God poking me in the ribs saying, “Do you get it now?”

Lesson 1: Location, location, location. We arrived about 5:00 on Friday. That was way too late. All the prime positions had been taken. For the Friday night contest on the most attractive boat, people go up to buy beer and get voting tickets. The secret is to have your boat as close to the beer as possible. We were just too far away.

Lesson 2: Get out there and get others to believe in you. The Pink Pirates were a bunch of cute 7 year old girls with a killer boat closest to the beer. We were a bunch of demure Episcopalians far away from the action. We had our one manila envelope taped neatly to the boat with a note: “Vote here for Noah’s Ark” How does that compete against a squadron of 7 year old girls wearing matching pink pirate Tee shirts right after you purchase your beer?

Lesson 3: Have faith. Last week the vote here seemed to be roughly equal between faith and doubt. Faith would have us get in the boat the first time and paddle to victory. Doubt is the engineer in me that said we needed a brief field test. So Friday night we paddled the boat across the inlet to our display location. Unfortunately that exposure to water got the bottom hull a bit soggy. I needed to have more faith.

Lesson 4: Practice, practice, practice. A week earlier we did some rehearsals in my canoe. That helped the youth team a great deal. Glenn Bibelheimer and I decided to enter a two person event. We should have practiced more. A couple of times in the race I doubted Glenn’s directions and we suffered precious seconds of time as a result.

Lesson 5: Just relax and hold on tight. It’s a game. It’s a contest. It’s fun. It doesn’t have to be so serious. Yes, when you combine engineering and a competitive event, you hook me on several fronts – but it is just a game. Have fun. Enjoy life. Grace Church knows how to have fun!

All these lessons can be applied to our life as a church, as a community in Christ, and as individuals. Glenn and I hoped that the youth would go first but that’s not how the race turned out. Glenn and I went first, which meant the boat was much more waterlogged and damaged for the second event with the youth.

The youth did exceptionally well. They displayed great courage and faith that they would cross that finish line. The bottom of the boat was completely waterlogged. Even though the bottom was 1.5 inches thick, it was more like a wet blanket than a rigid bottom. As they made the turn, the internal keel was the only thing floating that supported them, along with their faith, as they paddled through this event and life itself. The boat was watertight, but the bottom was barely able to keep their knees from poking through into the water.

They finished the race. The bottom of the boat was no longer able to perform its functions. Soggy cardboard was torn off the bottom so that only the duct tape remained. When we loaded the boat into a pickup truck to bring it to church, we folded it in half lengthwise.

Isn’t that the way life is? We start out fully functional, with high hopes and excitement. Some people are like some of the boats we saw. They could not paddle in a straight line so they went in loops. A few sank within a few yards of the launching point. Many completed the race. Nearly everyone who finished the race did so with their boat diminished in some way.

Don’t we cross the finish line of life with less than we had at the beginning? Don’t we end up a bit soggy and worse for the wear? Are we not ready to go home after the race?

Earlier in the day I joked with someone about different ways we could have cheated and built a better boat. She smiled and said, “But there is just no glory in winning when you cheat.”

So what is our glory when we finish the race of life? [pause] When we reach out to help others and when we devote our life so that others may be better off, then we will receive the crown of victory. THAT is our glory.

What we experienced this weekend was absolutely glorious. The time, energy, and talents of everyone involved showed the strength and faith we have as a community. Even at times when our own faith may falter, this community is always present, full of faith and courage to cheer us on to that finish line – all to the Glory of God! Hallelujah!

There are so many misguided interpretations to this key parable that it is easy to miss the plain truth. Rather than expository preaching, I thought it might be fun to give you two new parables illustrating two radically different interpretations of the parable of the sower. Here is the first one.

A corrupt politician in a big city wanted to become the mayor of that city. Slowly she went through every precinct in the city promising jobs and favors to anyone who would vote for her. She lavished attention on those who could organize large groups to vote for her. She pulled strings and made it very uncomfortable for anyone who opposed her. Within a few years she became mayor and ruled the city with the same favoritism that got her elected. This went on for some years and many people said they were happy because of the jobs and favors they had received.

One day another politician with even deeper pockets decided he wanted to be mayor, so he used the same strategy and undermined the mayor. Eventually he unseated the mayor and ruled over his favorites for a while. This cycle of favors and elections continued for a long time. People just took it as the truth that those who were not connected to the current mayor would be isolated or even punished.

Here is another parable.

There once was a monk in a huge city in the Far East. The city had millions of people living in abject poverty, and the young monk was filled with compassion for their suffering. Even though the monk was born into a merchant class family and his monastic life was austere, he lived better than most of the poor in the city.

One day he decided that offering prayers to God while so many people suffered outside the gates was an outrage. He got up in the middle of worship one day, went outside the gates of the monastery, and gave away the food from the monastery kitchen to everyone at the gate. His only care was to relieve their suffering, and he did.

Some of his superiors saw how this made many people happy and gave them hope again. Some of them supported the young monk. Others refused to oppose him and did nothing. But some of the older superiors were jealous and said among themselves, “This young buck has not earned his stripes by spending years in the monastery like us. Why should we let him become so powerful?” So they plotted against him.

Months went by and the crowds grew enormously along with donations from all over the city. The monastery increased in size to support feeding all the people. Some people ate the food and never even said thank you. Others ate the food and helped out for a while but returned to their life of poverty. A smaller group ate the food and was so amazed by the generosity of the young monk that they organized to expand the feeding. The young monk was happy and continued his prayers and daily chores at the monastery. The people in the city began to grow; businesses and commerce flourished. The stronger the city became, the more the elders in the monastery plotted.

Finally the superior of the monastery summoned the young monk. He said that the young monk must learn true humility and obedience. So they sent him to another monastery far away in the mountains where no one lived but a handful of old dying monks.

In the parable of the mayors the seed is the false gospel of exclusive claims about religion. Such exclusive claims build up this or that church or leader from time to time, but they have no sustaining power. The jobs and political favors distributed to the insiders are the exclusive claims that God only loves certain people, or that God only loves people who will DO certain things or that God only loves people who BELIEVE certain things. The church and its leaders are the parties who benefit by falling in line behind one mayor or the next.

In the parable of the monastery, the young monk is the Word of God. He is not the earthly person of Jesus, but he is the risen Christ, the Logos, or in John’s Gospel, God’s Word. He is the life giving force that was here before creation and gives life to all of creation. The people who ate the food and did nothing in gratitude were the seeds thrown on the path in Jesus’ parable of the sower. How many of us at one time in our life or another have received blessings from God without giving thanks?

The people who ate the food and helped out for a while but then went back to life as usual were the seeds scattered among the thorns or rocky ground. Do you find yourself weighted down with the cares of the world at times wondering about your family, your health, your financial situation, or your job? Do these things ever hold you back from giving back to others?

The smaller group recognized and received the same generous spirit of the young monk. They could see the suffering and through the same generous spirit they were able to sustain the work. Note that this parable does not refer to any particular religion, but only to the spirit of generosity and the response of the people to it.

The Good News of this teaching is that God’s Word is generously given to everyone at all times in our lives. We do not have to DO anything or BELIEVE anything or BELONG to anything to receive it. At different times in our lives we will find ourselves confronted with situations where we ARE the soil on the path or we ARE the soil amidst the thorns or we ARE the rocky ground. At the times in our lives when we ARE the good soil, will we recognize the blessings we have received and respond with the same generous spirit?

Our Gospel lessons the past two weeks fall into a special category of “seedy teachings from Jesus.” I just have to wonder what Jesus would have done with today’s lesson if some smart aleck in the crowd shot up their hand and said “I know, I know.” “Know what?” Jesus asks. “I know how God will do it. God will use Roundup resistant genetically modified wheat and then spray Roundup over the whole field just before harvest time.”

What I find frustrating about these lessons is that Jesus explains MOST of the parable. I am tempted to say, “Jesus explained most of it. No need for a sermon. We’re done here.” But he did not explain ALL of it. We do have some cautionary items and caveats to note here:

First of all this parable offers solid teaching on the age old and unsolvable problem of “Why does God allow evil to be present in the world.” Who here has not wondered why an all powerful God would allow evil in the form of natural disasters, personal health, or individual bad behavior to flourish in the world. The short answer is “Good and bad spring up together from the same soil. They can be difficult to tell apart from one another. Live with it.” For a longer answer, I commend Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

Note that Jesus cautions the slaves NOT to take matters in their own hands by uprooting the weeds. The plants on top may be easily separated, but the roots are intertwined, and uprooting the bad would harm the good. The weed Jesus refers to here is very common in the Middle East. It is called “darnel” and it looks identical to wheat almost until the very end when the seed heads begin to form. When you look at a crowd of people can you tell the good from the bad? The sinners from the righteous? I had a junior warden at a former parish embezzle $750K from a local swim club. Everyone was shocked. He is going to jail. He and his family were strong contributors to the church.

How many times when we see evil or misbehavior in our family or our congregation have we been tempted to take the matter into our own hands? Often what passes for leadership is the person who will pass judgment and take action quickly. “Drive the bum out.” “Get rid of her.” “Those folks are bad people.” When you take this kind of leadership and apply it to groups of people divided by religion, language, race, or geography, what you get is called “ethnic cleansing.” This is NOT leadership. It is madness.

How many times do well meaning people in a congregation try to take action and weed out those people they consider to be troublemakers? Giving in to the all too human desire for control, they circumvent the frustrating and messy process that everyone in the congregation needs to do. Do you know what that messy process is? Prayer, Bible study and discernment. Oftentimes God’s worst enemies are people who assume they are God’s friends doing God’s work. If you find yourself quick to judge sometime, come see me first. We will delay the judgment and begin with prayer, Bible, and discernment.

What would have been apparent to Jesus’ audience, but is lost to us hearing about weeds and wheat, is that these two plants cannot be identified or separated until harvest time. The simple lesson from this is that in spite of our desire to label this or that group as evil or terrorists or just plain bad, the only one who gets to make that call is God at the end of the age when God’s reapers gather the weeds to be burned and the wheat into the barn.

Next I call your attention to the collective nature of this parable. Jesus is not talking about individual sinners or righteous people. Nor is he talking about groups of people who are sinful or righteous. We are in fact the muddy field in which these seeds are planted. Good and bad. Evil and just. Righteous and sinful. All these grow at the same time in each one of us.

For example there was an 18th century English slave ship captain whose early career is worth retelling. His father was a respected ship captain and his mother died when he was a child. He first went to sea with his father’s crew at age 11. By 18 he was captured and impressed into the British Navy as a junior officer. His characteristically foul language and attitude did not serve him well. He abused everyone on the ship including the commanding officer. He tried to desert at one point and was punished by flogging in front of the crew. He was reduced to the lowest rank of seaman. Following this humiliation, he contemplated suicide.

In the mid-Atlantic the British Navy had enough of him and transferred him to a slave ship – as a slave. The ship returned to West Africa and he was held as a slave by a black plantation owner for three years. Eventually his father learned of his predicament and arranged to buy his son out of slavery.

You would think with this kind of resume that a near death experience might turn him around. He eventually got his own ship and made quite a profit carrying slaves, rum, and sugar. One journey off the coast of Donegal a fierce storm came up that nearly swamped his ship. With the main deck awash, the masts gone, several crew lost, rudder disabled, the ship drifted helplessly in the westerly wind at night towards the rocky coast. As the ship filled with water he called out to God and vowed to turn his life around. As he did, some of the remaining cargo floated in the hold and stopped up the hole in the hull. The ship was able to drift into shore.

This first vow was only partly effective. He quit swearing, gambling, and drinking and began to read the Bible. He continued to sail in the slave trade. While sick with a fever on the next voyage he asked God to take control of his life. He made several more slave trips until he suffered a severe stroke.

After the stroke it would take nine more frustrating years of study and application to the church before he became ordained as a priest in the Church of England. As rector of the little parish in Olney, John Newton is most famous for writing the song we know today as Amazing Grace, as well as Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken. With William Wilberforce, Newton was a strong advocate for the abolition of slavery.

Good and evil are in each one of us. With God there is plenteous redemption.

One of my prayers during our week in the cooler, drier mountains of New Mexico was for this heat wave to break and give everyone some relief. As you can see, my prayers are not always effective.

As we visited various archaeological sites of the Pueblo Indians, I noticed that after living successfully in adobe pueblo communities for over a thousand years, the one thing that forced the Indians to abandon their settlements was a twenty year drought.

Our recent experience with only a month of triple digit highs and scant rainfall has made everyone a bit grumpy and inconvenienced, but can you imagine living for twenty years with almost no rainfall where the Rio Grande River dried up?

I cannot listen to typical sermons about the so-called miracle feeding of the 5,000 as long as the specter of famine and misery haunts so many places around the world. I cannot listen to sermons that say in essence “Jesus fed the people because they believed in Jesus. If you believe in Jesus he will feed you and bless you too.”

Not only is such a sermon a heresy, but it actually causes harm and increases suffering. If Jesus heard this preached, I think he would fire the preacher.

As I write this sermon, I have intentionally run a series of images of the current famine in Somalia where one third of the population faces starvation. The director of the World Food Program visited there and reported, “I saw large numbers of children extremely weakened by the long journeys in search of food… Some people are forced to leave family members along the road as they trek on in search of help. .. one woman had lost three of her children along the way… trying to reach food.”

It is not helpful to distract your feelings by talking about the politics of a failed nation state ruled by warlords with connections to Al Qaeda. Politics for this or any other situation are irrelevant because the Gospel tells us, “When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.” Jesus did not turn aside and say, “Let’s get out of here; these people are getting what they deserve.”

Instead he had compassion for them and he stayed there among them and he did what he could. Who among us would go to Somalia right now to help?

In our own town of Muskogee we have 300 pound ten year old children with medical needs of people in their 40s! Although it is not starvation, it is a form of malnutrition. At the same time, the Boston Globe noted “Doctors at a major Boston hospital report they are seeing more hungry and dangerously thin young children in the emergency room than at any time in more than a decade of surveying families.”

What are we called to do about these as baptized Christians? When confronted with a late hour and a crowd getting hungry, the disciples asked Jesus “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They replied, “But we have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” You can almost hear Jesus thinking to himself, “Did you hear what I said? YOU FEED THEM.”

There are times in history when we need to hear these stories as miracle stories and times when we need to hear the more practical explanation, one that empowers us instead of dazzling us. One common interpretation of this story says that the people going to hear Jesus that day were not stupid. Who would drive to Tulsa for a late afternoon or early evening event without making some kind of provision for dinner? Likewise the people following Jesus that day knew they were going far from the village, so they brought food with them.

So the miracle here, if there is one, is that people took enough to share and there was food left over just like a church potluck. But the words of Jesus to the disciple AND to us remain the same no matter how you interpret this story. YOU FEED THEM.

In Guatemala the poor must pay money for the privilege of picking through the trash for food. In Honduras children wait at the dump for the trash to unload. Behind the children are vultures. With more than 2,000 children foraging at the Tegucigalpa dump, a few of them become food themselves for the vultures. YOU FEED THEM.

In Haiti the villagers bake and eat “cookies” made of dirt, salt, and bouillon. They tighten belts around their children’s bloated bellies to fight severe hunger pains. Jesus tells us YOU FEED THEM.

Grace Church has a long positive history of feeding others. We can and we will do more. But we need to go beyond incremental improvements. We need to have our spirits infused with the same compassion that moved Jesus that day.

I try to incorporate the Good News AND a spiritual challenge in my sermons, so this time it should be perfectly clear. The Good News is never about God blessing us or any of us benefitting because we believe. We hear the Good News so that WE will be a blessing to others. The Good News in this story is that God gives us compassionate hearts so that we can hear the cries of others.

Our challenge is that we need to engage our hearts in the presence of those who are hungry. We need to go on a mission trip. I am asking for a minimum of six people to go with me on a mission trip with Food for the Poor next summer. When you return from a trip with Food for the Poor, you will never be the same again. You will be richer in ways that really matter.

For a number of years, the owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team paid a Russian psychic healer tens of thousands of dollars a year to simply watch their games on television and think positive thoughts for the Dodgers baseball team. This went on for a number of years. We don’t know whether the Russian spiritualist had any impact on the outcome of their games, but we can be sure that he enjoyed the extra cash.

In 2007 a Miss Teen America judge asked the contestant from South Carolina how to remedy the disturbing fact that one in five Americans cannot locate the United States on a world map. Unfortunately she was part of the one in five.

A college student was unable to comprehend how it was possible to travel downhill and north at the same time. She thought it violated the laws of physics. I am glad she was not in one of my physics classes.

A similar group of one in five Americans believes that witches are real, that the sun revolves around the earth, that the lottery is a sound financial investment, that aliens from other plants abduct humans, and that the apocalypse will happen in their lifetime (and that they are part of the group that will experience the rapture).

I must make a distinction here. To “believe in” something in our day and age usually means that you have thought about it rationally and have come to some conclusions. This world view is a direct descendent of the Enlightenment Era, the Age of Reason starting with Isaac Newton in the 1600s– tracing through the industrial revolution all the way to our “post-modern” era today. Things can only be true or false if they can be apprehended by human reason. The scientific method of theory, hypothesis, experimental fact, and proof or rebuttal is the queen of rationalist thought, and it trumps any other way of knowing.

Our Enlightenment or scientific world view makes us unconsciously divide matters into things that can be examined critically with science and logic versus a set of matters that can only be grasped with the human heart. Some scientists, academics, and rationalists tend to classify matters of the heart as second class. Religions fall into this group of matters of the heart.

At the time of Jesus, our rational world view and especially its application to matters of the heart would be incomprehensible. Jewish thought at that time held that the human heart was the seat of emotions, intelligence, reason, and wisdom. When making a decision. whether about what fruit to purchase in the marketplace, ethical decisions. or how to be a faithful Jew, the human heart with all of its faculties would guide you into making righteous choices.

It is true that some schools of Greek philosophy and rhetoric infused early Christian writings, beliefs and practices; especially the writings of Paul. Setting that aside for a moment, you just cannot apply deductive reasoning to things like why a soldier in combat would jump on a grenade and willingly sacrifice himself for his colleagues; or why a mother would sacrifice herself for her child; or the existence of God; or a human being son of God; or why a loving and supposedly all powerful God would willingly sacrifice her child. Things like that just don’t add up.

But if you are in the trenches and bullets are whizzing by your helmet, you will instinctively appeal to a higher power. They say that there is no atheist in a foxhole. Likewise if you have a dread disease or even the threat of one, your friends, family, and church will all pray to a higher power on your behalf. Some modern neuroscientists claim that our brains are literally hard-wired to believe in a power or a deity greater than and outside of ourselves.

In the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, we are commanded to go out and baptize all peoples into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We need to follow this commandment with humility and deference to others. Some scholars have pointed out that a substantial number of those killed by European Crusaders were in fact Orthodox Christians.

The Trinity, in which we will stand in a moment and profess our belief, is in one sense a shorthand summary of the unique claims of the Christian faith: that God’s son was truly human and ascended to heaven, and that in his place we have the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth. But there is a cautionary note before we go out and bludgeon others with our hard-headed rational belief that we alone possess the truth.

What we don’t know about other peoples, other cultures, other world religions is whether the risen Christ appeared to them in some form or whether the Holy Spirit is working through their culture, their system of beliefs – even their religion. We can never know these things, therefore blanket condemnation of other beliefs and world religions is a product a human arrogance, and has no place in truly following Jesus.

Who then should we baptize? Who should we seek to convert as believers if we cannot call other religions “unbelievers?” The harvest is plenty. We are talking about those who have rejected God or a community of faith in any form: Those who spend their time on the golf course or at the lake or at home and who come to church, synagogue, mosque, or temple only rarely if at all. Those who openly reject God in any form and who ridicule religions and their believers as hypocritical. You know who they are.

Do not bother to engage the world out there in a rational discussion about your faith, because it is not rational. You will lose the argument before you begin. All you need to do is show them how your heart has changed. Show them your gratitude, your patience, your love, your wonder, your joy, your peace. Show them the matters of the heart and how THIS particular community of faith has made a difference for you. You cannot be a faithful Christian alone at home. In order to follow Jesus you must participate in a community of faith.

God’s grace, peace and mercy have been given to you. You are asked to share that with others. Bring ‘em here and we will baptize them into the sacred mystery of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have lots of room in here. Don’t you think it’s time to fill these empty seats?