SPEAKER_05: Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's family now and forever.
SPEAKER_05: Amen.
SPEAKER_05: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_05: Almighty God, do you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.
SPEAKER_05: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_05: Amen.
SPEAKER_05: The Lord be with you, and also with you.
SPEAKER_05: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_05: O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also have the grace and power faithfully to accomplish them through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.
SPEAKER_05: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: These are the descendants of Isaac, Abraham's son.
SPEAKER_01: Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramaean of Adam Aaron, the sister of Laban the Aramaean.
SPEAKER_01: Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife because she was Aaron.
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord granted his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived the children struggled together within her.
SPEAKER_01: And she said, If it is to be this way, why do I live?
SPEAKER_01: So she went to inquire of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord said to her, Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, one of you shall be divided.
SPEAKER_01: The one shall be stronger than the other.
SPEAKER_01: The first came out red like a hairy metal.
SPEAKER_01: So they named him Esau.
SPEAKER_01: Afterward, his brother came out with his hand ripping Esau's heal.
SPEAKER_01: He was named Jacob.
SPEAKER_01: Isaac was sixty years old when he born the boys.
SPEAKER_01: And Jacob gave Esau bread and little and he ate and drank and rose and went his way.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_03: Your word is a lantern to my feet and a light upon my path.
SPEAKER_03: I have sworn and am determined to keep your righteous judgments.
SPEAKER_03: I am deeply troubled.
SPEAKER_03: Preserve my life, O Lord, according to your word.
SPEAKER_03: Accept, O Lord, the willing tribute of my lips, and teach me your judgments.
SPEAKER_03: My life is always in my hand, yet I do not forget your law.
SPEAKER_03: The wicked have set a trap for me, but I have not strayed from your commandments.
SPEAKER_03: Your decrees are my inheritance forever.
SPEAKER_03: Truly, they are the joy of my heart.
SPEAKER_03: I have applied my heart to fulfill your statutes forever and to the end.
SPEAKER_04: A reading from Paul's epistle to the Romans.
SPEAKER_04: For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
SPEAKER_04: For God has done what the law, weaken by the flesh, could not do, but by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemns sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.
SPEAKER_04: For those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on things of the flesh.
SPEAKER_04: But those who live according to the spirit set their minds on things of the spirit.
SPEAKER_04: To set the mind on the flesh is death, and to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.
SPEAKER_04: For this reason, the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.
SPEAKER_04: It does not submit to God's law.
SPEAKER_04: Indeed, it cannot.
SPEAKER_04: And those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
SPEAKER_04: But you are not in the flesh, you are in the spirit, since the spirit of God dwells in you.
SPEAKER_04: Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
SPEAKER_04: But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.
SPEAKER_04: If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to our mortal bodies also through his spirit that dwells in you.
SPEAKER_04: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_04: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_05: Jesus went out and sat beside the sea.
SPEAKER_05: Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into abode and sat there while the whole crowd stood on the beach.
SPEAKER_05: And he told them many things in parables, saying, Listen, a sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up.
SPEAKER_05: Other seeds fell on rocky ground where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil.
SPEAKER_05: But when the sun rose they were scorched, and since they had no root they withered away.
SPEAKER_05: Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.
SPEAKER_05: Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
SPEAKER_05: Let any one with ears listen.
SPEAKER_05: Hear then the parable of the sower.
SPEAKER_05: When any one hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart.
SPEAKER_05: This is what was sown on the path.
SPEAKER_05: As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away.
SPEAKER_05: As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing.
SPEAKER_05: But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.
SPEAKER_05: The Gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_05: This week we get to hear one of Jesus' first parables in the book of Matthew, and maybe it's worth pausing to say the parable way of teaching is something that is absolutely unique to Jesus.
SPEAKER_05: In fact, it may be one of the few things that is absolutely unique to Jesus.
SPEAKER_05: Um, as we read through the Gospels, a lot of his ministry uh comes, uh is inspired by John the Baptist, and we can find a lot of the themes that Jesus returns to in the Hebrew Bible.
SPEAKER_05: But this form of teaching, the parable, is unique.
SPEAKER_05: And I have to say, if you sat in on the parable class, you've already heard me say this, but uh, these are some of the most intriguing things for me personally that Jesus has to say.
SPEAKER_05: There's a few ways that people tend to approach these, and they result in dramatically different results.
SPEAKER_05: So one way to hear a parable is that it really is a cute story that's trying to make one point.
SPEAKER_05: And in this parable, the parable of the sower, perhaps the point is how productive the ground can be and how productive we're supposed to be.
SPEAKER_05: It turns out that another way to read parables, this is actually what helped convert Augustine of Hippo.
SPEAKER_05: He uh actually was very disinterested in the Bible until Ambrose of Milan offered to him that parables actually could be read as multi-pointed allegories.
SPEAKER_05: And so an allegory, of course, is a story sort of like watership down, in which each element in the story represents a concrete reality.
SPEAKER_05: So it's sort of like speaking in code speak.
SPEAKER_05: And if you read through a number of early middle age and middle age uh interpreters, what they do when they read parables is try to say who is the rocky soil and who are the birds and what the seed is, because everything is a symbol that stands for something.
SPEAKER_05: And if we can just know that, we can decode the original meaning of the story, which is a really interesting way to hear the story, of course, and uh can lead us to some interesting ways.
SPEAKER_05: Although I will tell you, uh I grew up with a with a very strong allegorical reading of scripture that resulted in having the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, so that we could carefully identify whether Saddam Hussein was the ninth horn of the beast or the seventh horn of the beast, and who was the Antichrist?
SPEAKER_05: And uh, of course, I'm mixing genres now, but I hope you can see that reducing uh biblical speak, whether it's the apocalypse of revelation or the parable of the sower, can be dangerous business.
SPEAKER_05: Eventually somebody will probably get it right, um, but only momentarily.
SPEAKER_05: Um so what do parables do that's so uh unique?
SPEAKER_05: Well, um, parables um they compare something that people of the time of Jesus knew very well, like agriculture, uh sowing seeds, harvesting, sorting sheep and goats out, um, kneading yeast into dough.
SPEAKER_05: These are some of the images that we're going to get to see as the summer moves on.
SPEAKER_05: Um, but compares them with something that people don't understand very well, like the family of God.
SPEAKER_05: And so the goal is perhaps either to help us understand one thing we don't know by comparing it to something that we do.
SPEAKER_05: But there's another theory of, and by the way, that would be um creating an analogy, right?
SPEAKER_05: And that could be a simile using like or as, or it could be what we learned way back in the tenth grade, uh, that a metaphor is just like a simile, it doesn't use like or as.
SPEAKER_05: Um, there's another way though of hearing a story that um one of my teachers in seminary uh pressed, and I just find it so intriguing, intriguing because um if you follow what I'm getting ready to say, we can chase a story like a parable and spiral and spiral and spiral, and it really never bottoms out.
SPEAKER_05: And at the end of doing it, um not only is uh do we do we have challenges about how the the family of God could be bigger than we previously settled for, um, but sowing seeds itself uh can start to look really, really different.
SPEAKER_05: So um what my professor said is that um this method of looking at a parable is really all about uh metaphor.
SPEAKER_05: And uh metaphor, unlike the tenth grade definition I got, my professor said that metaphor is comparing two things that really cannot be compared.
SPEAKER_05: And at the end, the meaning and the definition of both of those things ends up being stretched instead of one replacing the other.
SPEAKER_05: So, what does that mean and how is that helpful this week?
SPEAKER_05: Um, a sower goes out to sow seed.
SPEAKER_05: The story would have been very familiar.
SPEAKER_05: Uh, many of us probably don't sow seed, to be honest.
SPEAKER_05: Um, my wife is the gardener and she will plant seeds sometime, but she doesn't sow it.
SPEAKER_05: She plants it carefully in the dirt.
SPEAKER_05: Or, more often than not, might go to Lowe's or to Ma's nursery and buy some small little plants so that we can have a good start on that.
SPEAKER_05: And um, and we get things like herbs or tomatoes as the summer goes on.
SPEAKER_05: The sower, if you notice in this story, does not seem to be particularly careful with the seed.
SPEAKER_05: Um, the sower, this is somebody you would think knows how to sow seed, has thrown it on three plots of ground that the sower ought to know are not going to yield anything.
SPEAKER_05: Um, a path, and of course, rocky ground and shallow soil.
SPEAKER_05: And um you can start to wonder, well, geez, why on earth is the sower being so c um careless?
SPEAKER_05: Is it because uh seeds are cheap, or because the sower has um seemingly infinite resources?
SPEAKER_05: Is it because the sower um really is just sort of a hired hand and it's just scattering here and there?
SPEAKER_05: I mean, this is where I think the story starts to become really interesting because we start to ask who's who in the story?
SPEAKER_05: Is the sower God?
SPEAKER_05: And if so, uh, well, geez, God should really know where to put seed and where not to put seed.
SPEAKER_05: God should be a much more careful investor than all of this.
SPEAKER_05: Then we get to hear there's these soil types, and depending on the soil, um, there's a different reaction to the seed.
SPEAKER_05: So the path is too hard, and the birds of the air come pick it up, they gobble it up, and it's gone.
SPEAKER_05: It took no root, it took no hold.
SPEAKER_05: And then we get to hear in the rocky soil that there was immediate excitement, but because the rocks prevented the roots really going down and creating depth, it just sort of wore out and there was no perseverance or sustainability.
SPEAKER_05: And then we get to hear in the soil with the weeds that um the seed gets choked, particularly by the cares of the world, um, by mammon or money or power, and so it withers and dies.
SPEAKER_05: And it is helpful to say here that a weed, sometimes we think, oh, like it's really clear what plants are weeds and which ones aren't.
SPEAKER_05: Although my dad, who has a botany degree, said to me one time, and I think this is really interesting, that a weed is just any plant you don't want.
SPEAKER_05: And so if you don't want a sewel palm in your in your yard, well, it's a weed to you.
SPEAKER_05: So it's really interesting to think about in this case, what are the weeds who are choking other people?
SPEAKER_05: And are they inherently bad or are they just things you don't want around, even if they're actually very good?
SPEAKER_05: Lastly, we get to hear that there's this four-soil type, which is really productive, like mega productive.
SPEAKER_05: It doesn't just yield reduplication, it leads 30, 60, or a hundredfold.
SPEAKER_05: And then the question is, what are we supposed to do with that story?
SPEAKER_05: Now, I've read other preachers and commentators who say, look, this story is really all about cultivating the soil.
SPEAKER_05: So cultivate the soil that you are.
SPEAKER_05: But you know what's interesting about that is that the analogy really breaks down there because soil doesn't cultivate itself.
SPEAKER_05: Actually, what's really interesting about that is one of the things that cultivates soil, not itself, is seeds.
SPEAKER_05: Um, something the birds of the air do when they eat a seed or a piece of fruit is they fly somewhere and they drop it somewhere else.
SPEAKER_05: And that is how things like strawberries are able to grow outside of their own patch.
SPEAKER_05: Now, sure, it's not a pleasant uh journey for that seed, but the instinct is it moves to a different patch of ground of ground.
SPEAKER_05: Umoubtedly been hiking in mountains and noticed in the middle of some granite peak that there is grass or even a tree that has managed to take a root in some cleft or crack or crevice, and in the middle of nowhere, here is this uh greenery or shrub or tree growing.
SPEAKER_05: Um there's this amazing thing about um roots over time growing into rocks and not just stopping, uh, um, but maybe it takes a few iterations or even generations that roots go in and break rocks and make room for soil.
SPEAKER_05: So it's a really interesting thing that seeds and plants can automatically cultivate the soil with their perseverance.
SPEAKER_05: Um can be said with soil that is peppered with uh with weeds, whatever those are.
SPEAKER_05: Again, things we don't want or things that the plant doesn't want, is that over time there can be different plants that grow up that provide shade or that sort of mix that culture around, and in the end, that soil can turn to very good through no effort of the soil.
SPEAKER_05: These are external forces.
SPEAKER_05: And finally, this last bit about um how can you possibly make a 30, 60, or 100fold increase, uh, consider that one strawberry seed easily has another hundred seeds.
SPEAKER_05: Of course, what's interesting about the whole story, Jesus tells, is that the ground doesn't really get to eat the produce anyway.
SPEAKER_05: The point of the produce is to spread that type of plant and to send more seeds out to cultivate more soil so there can ultimately be more nutrition, not for the soil itself, but for the rest of the world.
SPEAKER_05: I didn't know if I ruined that story for you, but it starts to make me think that if we start to prioritize and rank these soil types, we may be missing the point.
SPEAKER_05: If we say, boy, that person's like a stony path and the birds are just gonna gobble that up, then I think it's really helpful for us to hear Paul's corrective.
SPEAKER_05: Whether you're a path or stony soil, or uh you're full of weeds or productive soil, Paul tells us very, very clearly there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_05: There is no condemnation for the path.
SPEAKER_05: There's no condemnation for the birds.
SPEAKER_05: There's no condemnation for the stony soil.
SPEAKER_05: And this is Paul's follow-up to last week, in which he said he is struggling with the imprints that his culture has given him.
SPEAKER_05: He knows they're not productive and he just finds himself drawn to them like a moth to a flame.
SPEAKER_05: With the isms, the things he's not even aware of, but he knows are happening in the world, and even with his with the prejudices that he's formed, his conclusion after listening, the wretchedness of struggling over and over and over again to overcome these forces that are in fact overcoming others, his conclusion is he's not wretched at all, but there is no condemnation for him in the eyes of God.
SPEAKER_05: And I wonder if that isn't a key to what types of seeds actually cultivate the soils of our world.
SPEAKER_05: See, I want to tell you that I think I think the story could be about what type of soil you are, but I think instead it's really about what types of seeds do we sow.
SPEAKER_05: The truth is lots of plants put out seeds, and some of them produce some really thorny plants.
SPEAKER_05: Some of those seeds are already so cooked from the heat outside or they're overly dehydrated.
SPEAKER_05: And you know, that I can easily see that some of the seeds that I personally put out in the world are cooked with my anxiety, with my fear, with my worry.
SPEAKER_05: Some of the seeds I put out in the world essentially want just a monoculture of myself, of my politics, of my way of looking at the world, that they can easily choke out all of the other diversity that, frankly, would really enrich the field and enrich the production for the harvest if it were allowed.
SPEAKER_05: I wonder if I put out seeds often enough that can really change the whole topography.
SPEAKER_05: Seeds that break through rocks of resistance that are there, quite honestly, for probably very good reason.
SPEAKER_05: Do I put out seeds of grace that allow shields and armor and defensiveness in other people to be put down?
SPEAKER_05: Do I put out seeds that invite trust that end up nourishing other people and the world?
SPEAKER_05: Or do I put out seeds that are weeds?
SPEAKER_05: Do I look at soil in which seeds are not taking root like I think they ought to?
SPEAKER_05: And do I, unlike Christ Jesus, condemn that soil?
SPEAKER_05: Do I say, my grace, my mercy, my hope, my charity, my truth, my love is too good for that kind of soil?
SPEAKER_05: Or do I trust that seeds can cultivate soil even if it takes over and over and over again for a seed to start to break through pavement and then through bedrock and then to go through times of being choked until root is taken?
SPEAKER_05: In some ways, I think the story is talking about the evolution that grace will bring if we continue to put it out.
SPEAKER_05: And what does that have to do with Jacob and Esau?
SPEAKER_05: These are these two children, and it's very, very clear from the story that this is more about truth than about factuality.
SPEAKER_05: The story is saying these two children are wrestling in the womb and that Jacob is born a super breech baby holding on to the heel of his elder brother.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, it's so hard to imagine that being factually true, but it's really easy to see in the current climate in which we're living, whether we're talking about race or gender or disease, that there has been heel grabbing going on in our past, heel grabbing, trying to one-up somebody.
SPEAKER_05: See, Jacob does this just absolutely Faustian quest.
SPEAKER_05: He's the secondborn child, and what he really wants to do is be born first, and it can never happen.
SPEAKER_05: So instead of trying to live into who he is, he tries to steal what he can never have.
SPEAKER_05: Even if Esau dies, Jacob will still never have been the firstborn.
SPEAKER_05: Even if he tricks Esau out of his birthright, it's not his birthright because he wasn't born first.
SPEAKER_05: And so instead of living into his family, instead of being, well, frankly, who he could not control but who he was born to be, he decides to try to control everybody else.
SPEAKER_05: And he ends up fighting and being distanced from a brother, living in isolation from a family for no reason at all.
SPEAKER_05: And I want to suggest that this is a really interesting commentary, not only on the ancient Hebrew people who distanced themselves at a loss from their brothers and sisters, but from us today, who often meaninglessly distance ourselves from our brothers and sisters, instead of living into a family, instead of receiving gifts like grace and brotherhood and sisterhood, I see the tendency in myself to grab heels, to try to take what we can get instead of receiving what we've been given.
SPEAKER_05: And as the story proceeds between Jacob and Esau, the consequences grow higher and higher and higher.
SPEAKER_05: And I'm going to shortcut a little bit to the end where Jacob steals and steals and steals from his brother.
SPEAKER_05: And his brother over and over again gets mad, but offers to forgive him.
SPEAKER_05: And Jacob can never receive that gift from his brother.
SPEAKER_05: He never is fully reconciled with his brother.
SPEAKER_05: And that's a concern I think that we have right now is will we continue to grab heels and apply condemnation as Christ does not?
SPEAKER_05: Or can we go back and be reconciled by sowing seeds of grace even in the most difficult-looking places?
SPEAKER_05: Now there's something really counterintuitive.
SPEAKER_05: Seeds have a limited quantity, and when you run out, you're gone.
SPEAKER_05: So they're a limited commodity.
SPEAKER_05: You've got to use them carefully, even if you've got a lot.
SPEAKER_05: But there is one thing that is not like that, and that is love.
SPEAKER_05: That is, the more we exercise love, the more we practice love, the more we practice empathy and compassion, especially when we don't feel like it, the more we will have, and I think the parable is urging us this week, especially given what's going on, to sow love, to sow grace, to sow listening, to sow listening patiently instead of jumping to fix problems, to listen patiently, to sow seeds like that, intentionally, exponentially, and without fatigue.
SPEAKER_02: Let us pray for the church and for the world.
SPEAKER_02: Grant Almighty God that all who confess your name and be united in your truth, live together in your love, and reveal your glory in the world.
SPEAKER_02: Lord and your compassion.
SPEAKER_02: We pray for all who govern and hold authority in every nation, for the members of the armed forces throughout the world, and for all who struggle for peace and justice, that they may act with the presentation, to plant the seeds of your kingdom everywhere.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, and your compassion.
SPEAKER_02: Give us all a reverence for the earth as your own creation, that we may use those resources rightly in the service of others and to your honor and glory.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, and your compassion.
SPEAKER_02: Bless all whose lives are closely linked with ours.
SPEAKER_02: And grant that we may serve Christ in him and love one another as he loves us.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, and your compassion.
SPEAKER_02: Lead our parish.
SPEAKER_02: Source of wisdom, guide us, source of strength, support us, source of love and unify us.
SPEAKER_02: We pray.
SPEAKER_02: Lord and your compassion.
SPEAKER_02: God, Saint Thomas, the apostle school.
SPEAKER_02: Those who teach and those who learn.
SPEAKER_02: May rejoice in the knowledge of your truth.
SPEAKER_02: That we may teach our students to love whatever is just and true and good.
SPEAKER_02: And that we may be comparers of your grace and to all who come through our doors.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, in your compassion, comfort and heal all those who suffer in body, mind, or spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Give them courage and hope in their troubles.
SPEAKER_02: And bring them the joy of your salvation.
SPEAKER_02: Especially Chris.
SPEAKER_02: Larry.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, in your compassion.
SPEAKER_02: Compassionate God.
SPEAKER_02: Make your healing and peaceful presence known to the world.
SPEAKER_02: Comfort those who mourn.
SPEAKER_02: Strengthen those who are weary.
SPEAKER_02: Encourage those in despair.
SPEAKER_02: And lead us all into the fullness of life.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, hear our prayer.
SPEAKER_05: Let us renew and reconsider our faith in the words of a new creed.
SPEAKER_05: We are not alone.
SPEAKER_05: We live in God's world.
SPEAKER_05: We believe in God, who has created and is creating, who is come in Jesus, the word made flesh, to reconcile and make new, who works in us and others by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_05: We trust God.
SPEAKER_05: We are called to be the church, to celebrate God's presence, to live with respect in creation, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope in life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us.
SPEAKER_05: We are not alone.
SPEAKER_05: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_05: Now the peace of the Lord be always with you, and also with you.
SPEAKER_05: As our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray.
SPEAKER_05: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
SPEAKER_05: Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.
SPEAKER_05: Amen.
SPEAKER_05: May God, who by the Holy Spirit calls those of many languages and world views to proclaim Jesus as Lord, strengthen your faith, and send you out to bear witness to God in word and deed.
SPEAKER_05: And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be upon you this day and remain with you forever.
SPEAKER_05: Amen.
SPEAKER_05: Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
SPEAKER_05: Thanks be to God.