Readings and Sermon
Matthew 13: 1-9; 18-23 |
The Remarkable Size of the Harvest |
July 10, 2005 |
Gospel reading (MP3) |
Sermon (MP3) |
Sermon text (PDF) |
I have now lived in the Pacific Northwest for almost 42 years - having moved here with my family when I was about 2 or so. No -- actually, I was a little older than that -- but my age at the time of our move did contain the number '2' . Having lived now in God's country for oh, these many years -- in my mind at least -- I have become a true Northwesterner -- Starbucks runs in my veins instead of blood, I have come to prefer green and rain over the brown and sunshine of my early years and yes I do love to garden when I have the time.
But as I have discovered low these 42 years -- a love of gardening does not a gardener make -- including me. I did not inherit my mother's green thumb -- nor even my father's light brown thumb. No -- through some genetic mutation, I was born with the blackest of black thumbs. And so, I always read this morning's familiar gospel lesson with my own lifetime of gardening experiences in mind. For example -- in addition to those spelled out in this today's lesson -- over the years I've discovered an additional 3 ways for seeds not to take root in my garden: 1) Denying them water when this gardener forgets to use her watering can --2) Never taking the time to transplant young plants from those little black containers into real soil --- and 3) The inability to keep our dog, Sam, from caring for our plants in his own very unique way.
But this morning, instead of focussing on the abundant harvest promised in Jesus' parable -- and a sizeable one it is -- we will consider, rather, on the remarkable and abundant harvest alluded to in this morning's Old Testament narrative. The story centers around a common theme found in both Testaments -- the crisis of barrenness -- the ultimate tragedy of a couple's life in Biblical times. For how can YHWH's covenant with Abraham -- that covenant that will make him the father of many nations -- how can that covenant come to fruition if Abraham's son and wife cannot conceive the child -- the son -- they so desperately hope for? This is where our story today picks up.
Rich and healthy -- with a well-pedigreed wife -- life must have been for Isaac and Rebekah -- a bowl of cherries. Food was abundant --their tents many -- and he -- Isaac -- was the beloved of God. But, as Beverly Gaventa say -- Rebekah -- Isaac's only wife -- had been barren for some 20 years -- and between them -- Isaac and Rebekah did not have the resources or the capability to generate their own future. Everything was s ready -- but nothing worked. The crisis -- in effect -- turns out not to be biological -- but rather -- theological. Isaac is driven to prayer. YHWH listens. The prayer is answered. And Rebekah conceives.
But this is not the end of the story, is it? For God's blessing of the pregnancy is fraught with trouble and danger. For immediately, the narrator begins speaking of the "children" that struggled within Rebekah. She asks rhetorically: If this is going to be the way it is -- why do I continue to live -- facing life with warring children? So she asks YHWH -- why does this have to be so? And YHWH explains -- Two nations are in your womb -- and they shall be divided -- and one will be stronger, and the stronger one -- the younger --- will be served by the elder.
How can this be -- this oracle of inversion as it is called by Walter Brueggemann? God has started trouble that will last a good part of a life time between the two brothers -- as well as between the father and the son who tricked him. For how would -- how could God overturn in a matter of moments --the cultural convention of primogeniture -- that privilege and entitlement of the firstborn? That tradition that spelled out indelibly --that the oldest child -- the oldest son -- would inherit the entire estate of the father?
This oracle subverts primogeniture doesn't it? It negates it - casts it aside -- thus opening the way for the last one to become the first one. YHWH has categorically declared the supremacy of Jacob -- father of the 12 tribes -- over Esau -- the father of Israel's enemy -- Edom.
No reason is given -- and no justification offered for Jacob's expected preeminence. For on one hand -- the oracle concerns God's utter freedom to break social convention. But the oracle also foresees much of what is to come later for Jacob. Rebekah prays -- and God decrees the shape and destiny of Jacob's life. And while Jacob all grown up acts on his own to acquire what is not his -- he is never alone. He is a creature of his free, powerful, decisive God -- the God that ended barrenness -- the God who ended primogeniture -- the God who anticipates that the younger -- the lesser -- will one day be served by the older --- the greater. No -- today's story is not just an intriguing birth narrative that describes the troubled pregnancy and birth of the third generation of Abraham's lineage. It is -- on a much deeper level -- an oracle that continues to narrate God's history -- God's providential activity in the world God created for us -- us --the beloved. For it is fundamentally -- dear friends -- an exposition of God's absolute sovereignty in the world and in our lives as followers of Christ.
More specifically the story tells us several things:
It reminds us that God makes remarkably gracious promises in our lives -- makes them -- and then keeps them as God did with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph. God does not renege on covenants made. God did not renege when the Son came into the world -- as a light to that world -- as a savior to that world -- as God incarnate - so that we might learn from him about the Father and the Father's endless love for all his creatures. God does not renege on the promise to sustain us through our dark valleys -- to empower and enlighten us that we may be servants of the Son in the world. God does not renege on the promise to gift us with his peace which passes all understanding -- that gracious gift that will guard both our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.
But Jacob and Esau's story today also reminds of another facet of God's sovereignty in our world. It reminds us that God in the beginning did not create the world to keep all possibilities open for us. God did not gift Isaac and Rebekah with a brood of children to sit on their laps in their twilight years. No -- God kept the promise made with Abraham -- but not in the way expected. Two sons -- two warring sons -- were born to them to continue the line of Israel as well as father its enemy -- Edom. No God does not keep all possibilities open to us that may choose among as we please. A little of this -- a smidge of that -- anything and everything to make us happy.
No -- there is certainly no denying that out of boundless love -- God does not gift us with freedom of choice in our lives -- the choice to make mistakes as sinful creatures -- the choice to accept -- to cherish -- the gracious gift of faith in God's son. Rather, the story affirms that we are to credit God with our destiny as God's people -- that the Holy One ultimately has the voice in our future -- the voice that can pronounce that the first shall be last -- and the last -- first. That the stronger will serve the weaker in God's wisdom and the Son's kingdom.
Finally, though, the story relates to us one last thing about the sovereignty of God. For it narrates that God -- at random -- can -- and does overturn privilege. That God challenges the ordering of human life -- of social practice -- when God's people have gotten it all wrong. That God challenges human convention -- tampers with the bedrock of societal fundamentals -- pulling out that cornerstone of human expectation so that God can walk again with the lowly and despised -- with the very last of the kingdom. God even sent the Son to save the world from all the practitioners of primogeniture -- to walk with the meek and hungry and the lost -- choosing that crucified one in spite of all conventional (human) wisdom to make all things new. It doesn't make sense -- and yet -- it makes perfectly good sense considering the remarkable size of the harvest the younger son gleaned in his lifetime.
LONG PAUSE
Our next hymn, "He Leadeth Me" is an old Baptist hymn that through the years has also been part of Presbyterian hymnody. Based on the 23rd psalm, it was written by Baptist preacher and lyricist Joseph Henry Gilmore in Philadelphia during the Civil War. Gilmore said of it at the time: "It was the darkest hour of the Civil War -- and that may have led me to realize that God's leadership is the one significant fact in human experience. For it makes no difference how we are led -- or whither we are led -- as long as God is leading us."
I chose this hymn for our service this morning because at least for me -- it captures in just a few short verses God's sovereign nature. Gilmore said as he started to write it: "I did not get beyond the words 'He leadeth me.' And so greatly impressed was I with the blessedness of divine guidance that I made this phrase my theme."
____ PAUSE _____
Sisters & Brothers: God is leading us. God is the voice of our future and the sovereign foundation of our existence. And we may trust -- like Isaac and Rebekah and Jacob -- we may trust -- that God and the Son will tend to us -- the astonishing garden grown from seeds planted well in good soil ---assuring us of a good planting -- -- and -- a remarkable harvest in this lifetime and the next. Thanks be to God. Amen.
