Broadcast Seeding before Jethro Tull

5 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 10, July 13, 2014

Isaiah 55:10-13 Psalm 65: (1-8), 9-14
Romans 8:1-11  Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Lectionary Link

        Today, I would like for us to consider farming before Jethro Tull.  And what does Jethro Tull have to do with farming?  Jethro Tull is the rock band which produced Aqua Lung and stars the flautist, Ian Anderson.  But the rock band is named after Jethro Tull, a progressive farmer who in the early 18th century perfected the method of seed drilling.  This involved dropping seeds through tubes and planted in nice rows, easy to thin and cultivate.  The more ancient method of seeding was called "broadcast" seeding, throwing seeds to the winds and letting them fall where they may.

  If one tries to rationalize the business of farming then one wants to increase the odds of seeds germinating and coming to full fruition and being accessible to harvest at the right time.

   The parable of Jesus which we have read today is not about Jethro Tull farming; it is about broadcast seeding method.  Slinging the seeds to the wind, falling willy, nilly upon a hopeful place to germinate and grow.   One might even say, it is kind of hit or miss farming.  And what kind of actuarial genius is God if the divine one does "hit or miss" farming?

   This parable was generated and it maintained itself by being repeated and elaborated and then finally written down with a subsequent interpretation because the parable is honest to the mystery of success.  It really does not explain why particular success happens; it only highlights that the conditions of freedom make success a continuous process of nature.  This sort of explanation can be very disappointing, because we want actuarial certainty in the explanation of things.  We want guaranteed success in all of our ventures.  It is a universal and inspired question continually to be asking about the success of things and the failure of things.  We often have plenty of each in our trial and error lives and we want to develop theories of probabilities to increase the odds of success and decrease the odds of failure.

  I think that the common wisdom of life is what would be called "probability" living.  It means we learn from living the likelihood of the conditions that contribute to success or failure in our ventures of life.  And so we have to take into account the dynamic mixture of nature and nurture which comprise any situation in life.

  Jesus and his followers were those who had questions  about the success and failure of the Gospel Movement.  The implied questions that everyone was asking and the ones which we ask are:  Jesus how can we have success?  How can we be guaranteed success?  Or what are the reasons why some things are successful?  Why are things sometimes just "ninety day" wonders, reaching a faddish success only to fizzle out?  Why don’t the effects of the Gospel message endure in the lives of those who hear it?

  The parable of the Sower provides us with some insights about creative advance in our lives.  The first insight is that the Sower is the one who owns the planting field.  God owns all of creation and God wants to impart this knowledge to humanity, who for the most part has lost the meaning and knowledge of being owned by God.  God does not want to lord it over human beings; God wants to remind humanity that if they acknowledge being sons and daughters of God then their lives would be more successful, because the knowledge of God’s love, God’s grace and God’s forgiveness and God’s justice is the good news which can bring success into the lives of people.

  Now one could make a negative judgment upon the farming abilities of the sower?  Why would God be one to do indiscriminate broadcast seeding with such a wonderful message as the message of the kingdom of God?  This indiscriminate broadcast seeding method is represented in other Gospels sayings about the impartial nature of God.  God is like the sun which shines upon the just and the unjust.  God is like the rain which falls upon the good and the evil.  The broadcast seeding method as seen in the parable of the sower is an indication that the good news of God's kingdom of love is freely given to everyone.  The seed arrives into every human condition and it is a good seed, it is a hybrid seed.  The seed of the kingdom is about how we belong to God as God's sons and daughters.  It is about how God loves us and forgives us and invites to grow in grace, love and justice.

  This wonderful message falls into the conditions of life experience of many people.  And not everyone is ready to receive and understand the benefit of this wonderful message?  Why?  Because the message is not forced upon anyone.  It is but a freely offered persuasive lure given as an invitation to everyone to come to know God's love.

  The unevenness of the human conditions means that everyone is not able to even know how to receive good news into one’s life.  The uneven human condition of the souls of people in significant ways determines the success of how we are converted to the good things offered to us in life.

  The parable of the sower represents the fact that Jesus honored the freedom present in the success and failure of how things happen in life.  Sometimes we do not become open to growth or change unless we have suffered some crisis of loss or change.  The gates and doors of our perception have to be cleansed continually so that we can see and understand the new creative advance which is offered to us.

  The genius of the parable of the sower is not that it explains success or failure but that it acknowledges the mystery of success and failure because all things are subject to the freedom of the process of nature and nurture.  But included within the processes of nature and nurture is the freedom of our choice.  Each of us has significant freedom in the play of nature and nurture for the success of creative advance in our lives.

  So what is our response to the parable of the sower today?

  We ask God and each other to help us have insights about the condition of receptivity of our lives today for making creative advance toward more just and loving outcomes.  And as we understand our condition of receptivity for more good news, we also are challenged to use our freedom to act deliberately towards the next step of creative advance.

  The parable of the sower reveals to us that life is not just about nature or about nurture, it also includes our willingness to determine the things which we can through wise action.  And so we ask today for insights and discernment about the process of nature and nurture in our lives, but we also ask for strength to become deliberate agents of changes towards what we know is better for us, our families, our parish, our community and our world.

  The parable of the sower is valid illumination for us today because it acknowledges the mystery of the nature of life even as it encourages us to exercise deliberate freedom toward creative advance in our lives today.  May the words of Jesus give us encouragement in our continuous efforts to advance in the art of living today.  Amen.

Finding Rest, While Having Incredible Self-Agnosticism

4 Pentecost, a p 9, July 6, 2014

Zechariah 9:9-12 Psalm 145:8-15

Romans 7:15-25a Matt. 11:25-30

 Lectionary Link

  We have read the confession of St. Paul from his epistle to the Romans today.  And we usually assume that St. Paul is like a person who is sometimes wrong but never in doubt.  However, we have enough of the writings of St. Paul not to make him into a master of consistency; consistent and certain is with how we like to pigeon-hole him.  But this confident Paul also confesses to be an agnostic; not about God or Jesus but about himself and the motivations of his actions as they pertain to impulse control.  St. Paul was something of a hothead; he acted upon impulse.  He once set out to put to death the followers of Rabbi Jesus.  And you can see why Paul came to be baffled about the motivations behind his own action.  In a rather stark confession, St. Paul wrote: “I do not understand my own actions.”  Perhaps he was thinking, “Why did I stand by as a collaborator in the stoning to death of Stephen?”  “I do not understand my own actions.”

  In many ways life is all about understanding human behavior and actions.  We have the Law of Moses, the New Testament, lots of other Holy Books, we have Plato and Aristotle, countless numbers of saints, theologians, gurus, mystics and the psychoanalytic traditions of Freud and Jung.  We have endless number of self-help books, Dr. Phil and it is all about the agnosticism which we confess about the human motivations of human behavior.  “I do not understand my own actions.”

  St. Paul writes what I call the Twilight Zone passage: “do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do.”  Without significant stylistic variation St. Paul uses, as it appears in English translation, the word “do” seventeen times.  St. Paul is baffled about human behavior; he is baffled about his own behavior; he is baffled about why he has done the things which he has done.

  We, too, are always upon the quest to understand why we and other people do the things that we do.  And there is not one magical formula to understand the motivations for all action.  It requires wisdom to understand all of the differences which pertain to understanding human actions.

  The Gospel lesson which we've read today includes some words of Jesus.  It is sometimes difficult to read the Gospels because of the ways in which they are edited.  In this Gospel passage it is almost like the editor thought, “I’ve got all of these sayings associated with Jesus and I do not have any specific context for each of these sayings, but because I’ve inherited this collection of sayings of Jesus, I am just going to put them here.”  So as baffled readers we wonder how all of these sayings go together to form a coherent theme.  And we have to rely upon our intuition about universal meaning present in the language itself.

  What was the motivation of the actions of John the Baptist?  What was the motivation for the actions of Jesus of Nazareth and Son of Man, Son of the God the Father?  People had different opinions about the behaviors of John the Baptist and Jesus.  All holy people should behave in the same way.  All prophets should behave in the same way.  Well maybe not.  It did not matter how John or Jesus behaved because they had different callings and different styles of ministry and they both had people who disapproved of them.  John the Baptist was an ascetic; wore a camel hair tunic, ate locust and honey and would not be found in the company of notorious sinners.  John did not go to people; they came to him.  People came out to the wilderness to him to repent of their sins.  Jesus, as the Son of Man, did not have place to live but he hung out with almost anyone.  Jesus went out among people.  He was seen at meal and in discussion with Pharisees, Sadducees, fisher-folk,  tax-collectors,   common workers,  soldiers,  foreigners,  prostitutes and with people of bad reputations.  Jesus and John had different styles of ministry; the wisdom about their behaviors and ministry had to do with the results.  Through wisdom one can understand how difference does not necessarily mean conflict or opposition.  With wisdom we can understand differences and respect them.

  These sayings attributed to Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew are what influenced the Jesus Seminar to understand Jesus primarily as a Wisdom teacher.

  Wisdom involves the rather rhetorical and artful use of language to evoke new meanings.  The artful use of language can be shocking and it can confront every day logic with counter-logic.  How can an infant wisdom be equated with the wisdom and knowledge of an adult person?  Jesus was confronting the literal mind of people to shock them into a profounder insight.  “Return to the native joy and wonder of one’s infancy; be born again.  You’ve grown too weary with all of the adult protocols and adult knowledge to the point of losing your zest for life.”  Jesus was saying, “You who are wearied by all of the oppressions of adulthood; come to me for rest.  Get underneath all of that adult layer of memories which have made you forget the joy and wonder of your original birth.  Complement your weary adulthood with the rest of infant aspect of your personhood arising in you through the power of meditation.  Your native infant selfhood can levitate through all of the layers of your adult knowledge that has helped you squelched the original capacity of joy and wonder.  Come back to wonder; yes you still have to pull the difficult loads of adulthood but you are yoked with me, the Christ, who will help you to access rest for your souls even while you bear the burdens of adult life.”

  St. Paul characterized the adult life of sin as a body of death which made him feel wretched.  This perhaps is a metaphor from a method of torture; a prisoner had the body of a corpse tied to him and of course such a torture would drive a person mad.

  St. Paul needed the experience of the higher power of the Spirit of Christ to free him from this torturous experience of a “negative habit” relentlessly clinging to him.  The rest of soul which Christ promises to all is this experience of a higher power within us which does not take us out of life; rather it helps us to access a power and wonder of living to accompany and supplement our adult lives so full of so many things which can sometimes seem to be clinging burdens.

  Let us embrace the insights of wisdom about behaviors and ministry today.  St. Paul found an experience to help deliver him from a torturous state of being internally enslaved to a dreadful habit.  We too can know this interior liberating experience.    The words of Jesus invite us to have wisdom about our ministry today.  Each of us has different ministry and the effective outcomes of ministry is the wisdom of ministry, not the sameness in the style of ministry.  Accept your ministry from Christ; it will be different from the ministries of other people so you need not compare yourselves with others.

  Finally, access your infant aspect of personality, not by being infantile or childish, but by the rousing and powerful memory of the original freshness of coming to life into this world.  This is a place we can access and return to as a new birth.  And this new birth is a yoke that we can have with Christ as we pull the burdens of life.  Let us know how to pull the burdens of life together with Christ and not as tortured individuals.

  Let us hear the voice of Jesus say today: “Come unto me and rest, for my yoke is easy and my burdens are light.”  May Christ help us to find the easing of our burdens today.  Amen.

Daily Quiz June 2014

Daily Quiz, June, 30, 2014

Which two prominent saints of the church do not get their own saints' day on the Episcopal calendar of saints but have to share one on the church calendar while their other days are named for their witness and events in their lives?

a. James and John
b. Timothy and Titus
c. Peter and Paul
d. James and Philip

Daily Quiz, June 29, 2014

The Acts of the Apostles records that Paul visited the Areopagus which is in what city?

a. Rome
b. Ephesus
c. Athens
d. Corinth

Daily Quiz, June 28, 2014

St. Irenaeus who died in c. 202 became known as the one who opposed certain Christian groups he deemed as heretics and therefore helped to limit the number of acceptable Christian writings.  Modern scholars came to call this large group of heretics what?

a. Valentinians
b. Marcionites
c. Gnostics
d. Manichaeans 

a. Daily Quiz, June 27, 2014

Why was the great leader Moses not permitted to lead the people of Israel into the Promised Land?

a. He was too old and died before the arriving
b. He struck a rock in impatience with the complaining Israelites
c. God denied him the privilege because of his lack of trust
d. b and c

Daily Quiz, June 26, 2014

To settle a dispute of some rebels against Moses, a sign from God was given to settle a leadership dispute.  What was the sign?

a. Aaron's rod turned into a snake
b. Aaron's rod budded
c. The waters of the Nile turned to blood
d. The ground opened up and swallowed Korah

Daily Quiz, June 25, 2014

Who wrote the lyrics to what is often called the "African-American National Anthem," Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing?"

a. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
b. Rosa Parks
c. James Weldon Johnson
d. Harriet Beecher Stowe

Daily Quiz, June 24, 2014

The archangel Gabriel announced the conception and birth events to the Virgin Mary; which archangel made the announcement to Zecariah about the birth of John the Baptist?

a. Michael
b. Uriel
c. Gabriel
d. Raphael

Daily Quiz, June 23, 2014

Who was the first martyr of Great Britain?

a. Thomas a Becket
b. Alban
c. King Edward
d.Thomas More

Daily Quiz, June 22, 2014

In liturgical minutiae the term "proper," Latin, "proprium," refers to what? e.g. Today for 2 Pentecost we use Proper 7

a. Liturgical correctness
b. Variable parts of the liturgy for a particular date or occasion
c. May include a collect, lectionary reading, hymn
d. All of the above
e. b and c

Daily Quiz, June 21, 2014

Fill in the blank from the Psalms: "So teach us to number our days that we might apply our hearts to                       .

a. loving God.
b. your commandments.
c. wisdom.
d. justice.


Daily Quiz, June 20, 2014

Caleb is known mainly for what role for the people of Israel?

a. He was a priestly assistant for Aaron
b. He built the golden calf
c. He was a spy
d. He challenged Joshua who succeeded Moses

Daily Quiz, June 19, 2014

Moses, Aaron and Miriam were famous siblings who once had a rivalry; Miriam opposed Moses and was left leprous for what?

a. criticizing Moses for his trip up Mount Sinai
b. speaking against Moses for failure to provide food
c. speaking against Moses for failure to provide water
d. speaking against the Moses for the nation of origin of Moses' wife

Daily Quiz, June 18, 2014

What biblical figure is quoted as saying, "Would that all the Lord's people were prophets and that God would put his spirit upon them?"

a. Luke/writer of Acts of the Apostles
b. Joshua
c. David
d. Moses

Daily Quiz, June 17, 2014

Where did Jesus get money to pay taxes?

a. From his disciples
b. From Lazarus of Bethany
c. From the mouth of a fish
d. From Nicodemus

Daily Quiz, June 16, 2014

A famous Empiricist was also a bishop and known for "subjective idealism" which implies things don't exist if they aren't perceived.  Did the tree fall in the forest if falling was not witnessed? Who was this bishop?

a. John Locke
b. David Hume
c. George Berkeley
d. Thomas Hobbes

Daily Quiz, June 15, 2014

What new English word was added as a new translation of the Nicene Creed for the Roman Catholic liturgy?

a. transubstantial
b. consubstantial
c. substantial
d. symbolic

Daily Quiz, June 14, 2014

Which is not true about the priestly caste of Israel?

a. All Levites are "cohanim"  (priests)
b. "Cohanim" are priest descendants Aaron
c. Aaron was a member of the tribe of Levi
d. Moses was a Levite and also called a priest by the Psalmist

 of Daily Quiz, June 13, 2014

What English "saint" on our calendar of saints said, "If there were no God there would be no atheists."

a. C.S. Lewis
b. Charles Williams
c. G.K. Chesterton
d. Evelyn Underhill
e. Dorothy Sayers

Daily Quiz, June 12, 2014

Who was the first Native American Episcopal priest?

a. Squanto
b. Enmegahbowh
c. David Oakerhater
d. Vine Deloria, Jr.

Daily Quiz, June 11, 2014

Which of the following is not true about St. Barnabas?

a. He was native of Cyprus
b. He was the first church leader to welcome the newly converted Paul
c. He was a missionary travel companion of Paul to the Gentiles
d. He sold his land and gave the money to the apostles
e. Paul wanted to take Mark with them; Barnabas did not 

Daily Quiz, June 10, 2014

The word "vanity" is most often associated with which book of the Bible?

a. Proverbs
b. Psalms
c. Ecclesiastes
d. Ecclesiasticus
e. Wisdom of Ben Sirach

Daily Quiz, June 9, 2014

Why is the feast day of the Book of Common Prayer to be commemorated on a week day after Pentecost?

a. It was introduced on Whitsunday 1549
b. Pentecost is about hearing the Gospel in one's own language
c. It could not take precedence for the feast of Pentecost
d. All of the above

Daily Quiz, June 8, 2014

The writer of the book of Acts says residents of the following places were present on the Day of Pentecost: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome,Cretans and Arabs.  Why would  such an international crowd be in Jerusalem?

a. Jerusalem was an important city in the frankincense trade
b. The Caesar moved workers there from around the empire
c. They were devout Jews from around the empire who were present in Jerusalem and pilgrims to a Jewish feast
d. They were soldiers who were forced to serve in Roman battalions   

Pentecost is day known for which of the following: 

a. commemorates giving the law on Mount Sinai
b. a feast of Weeks for the Harvest
c. being 50 days from Passover 
d. being 50 from Easter 
e. birth of the church as known in the tongues of fire event recorded in Acts
f.  all of the above
g. d and e

Daily Quiz, June 6, 2014

Who was the Archbishop of Canterbury on the date of Normandy Invasion, June 6, 1944?

a. William Temple
b. Geoffrey Fisher
c. Cosmo Gordan Lang
d. Michael Ramsey

 Daily Quiz, June 5, 2014

Some legends attribute the "invention" of the Christmas tree to what saint?

a. St. Tannenbaum
b. St. Wulfstan 
c. St. Boniface 
d. St. Willibrord

Daily Quiz, June 4, 2014

The Episcopal counter-part to canonization of saints is for the General Convention to vote to include a holy person in our official calendar of saints, "Holy Women, Holy Men."  Which Roman Catholic Pope was "made a saint" by the Episcopal Church before he became canonized by the Roman Catholic Church?

a. Pope John Paul I
b. Pope John XXIII
c. Pope John Paul II
d. Pope Pius X

Daily Quiz, June 3, 2014

Blandina was a martyr associated with what city?

a. Paris
b. Rome
c. Avignon
d. Lyons

Daily Quiz, June 2, 2014  

Which land area of the following was not promised to Joshua by God?

a. Land on Great Sea in the West 
b. Land of the Hittites 
c. Land to the Euphrates River
d. Lebanon
e. Arabia

Daily Quiz, June 1, 2014

Why did Zecariah lose voice and become mute?

a. He was frightened by an angel

b. He refused to name his son after himself

c. He did not believe the angel who told him Elizabeth was to have a child 

d. It was a condition of his old age

Commencement in the School of Jesus

Youth Sunday Sermon, June 29, 2014

2 Pentecost, ap8, June 29, 2014 

Jeremiah 28:5-9 Psalm 89:1-4,15-18

Rom. 6:1b-11    Matt. 10:24-39

 Lectionary Link

(Connor begins by serving pouring cups of water and serving them to the people in the front.)

Kalum:  Connor, what are you doing?  And could it not wait until after the service?

James:  I know what Connor is doing.  I give him credit for reading today’s Gospel.  But will his shameless showboating really get him extra brownie points in heaven?

Connor: You talking head preachers can preach the Gospel; some of us actually do the Gospel.  Jesus said whoever gives a cup of water to these little ones will not lose their reward.

Kalum: Well, excuse me, Saint Connor; I did not know I lived so close to a holy one!

James: Saint Connor, please could I get your autograph before you become a relic? 

Connor: Are you being ironic or just plain mocking? 

Kalum: We are sincere……..in our mocking, that is.  But you have initiated a very worthy topic for discussion.

Connor: I have? Accidents do happen.  What worthy topic do we have to talk about?

James:  Well, you are right about the importance of doing the Gospel rather than just talking about it.

Kalum: Yes, actions do speak louder than words.

Connor: That’s a cliché which happens to be true.  But what else can we learn from the Gospel?

James: Well, we have just graduated from high school.  And we now have a diploma which is an official record of our achievement.  And it is a piece of paper which represents more than just being piece of paper.

Kalum: What do you mean?

Connor: I think that he means it stands for 12 years of blood, sweat and tears of all of the work and study that we had to do to get it.

James: When we present our diploma, grade average and test scores, we are able to gain admittance into colleges and universities.

Kalum: The Gospel lesson is about accreditation and the credibility of the disciples of Jesus.

Connor:  Once Jesus was gone, his disciples worried about their credibility.  They worried about whether people would accept their teaching.  They did not have seminary diplomas and official ordinations so how could they be sure that people would accept their teaching as valid?

James: What it shows us is that authority and respect comes from one’s wisdom, learning, character and the reputation that one gets from studying with good teachers.

Kalum:  I guess if you studied physics and you had Albert Einstein as one of your professor, you might get a little more attention for your resume than if you just studied with Joe Blow.

Connor: So if the disciples were worried about whether they would be accepted, Jesus reminded them that he had taught them well.  He had taught them not just to preach the Gospel but to live Gospel.  So if people did not accept the teaching of the disciples then they probably would not of Jesus either.

James: Did you know that the church had its own way of issuing graduation diplomas?

Kalum: What would that be?

James: It is called apostolic succession.  It is an unbroken record of church leadership which has lasted these two thousand years.

Connor: Is that why we have bishops?

Kalum:  Each bishop is ordained by three bishops who were ordained by three other bishops and so the Gospel has been passed down in an unbroken chain.

James:  I don’t think that this means only bishops can do valid ministry.   I think that a bishop represents that the basic message of Jesus Christ has been transmitted from one generation to the next over these many years.

Connor: Because we have this unbroken tradition from Jesus, it means that we can believe and trust that Christ is still present in the life and ministry of the church. 

Kalum: We have the example of Christ which has been preserved in the writings of the New Testament but we have 2000 years of people who have tried to follow the teaching of Jesus.

James: Even though we have bishops and priest and official ordinations, the proof of the authority of the Spirit of Christ is to be found in how we live.

Connor:  And how are we supposed to live?

Kalum: We are supposed to live without sin.

Connor: How can we do that?

James:  St. Paul wrote that living without sin is about learning impulse control.

Kalum: I have impulse control; I choose chocolate over strawberry all of the time.

Connor:  Bravo Kalum!    How did you manage to set the bar so high?

James:  I think that St. Paul was trying to teach his students about the goodness of our lives but also about the responsibility that we have because of freedom.

Kalum: It is like he’s saying that life and the energy and desire is good; but it still needs to be directed.

James:  If we get too fixated on idols or things which are not worthy we can become enslaved to bad habits.

Connor:  So sin is not about being bad or despising ourselves; it is about understanding that we can always be better.  Sin is like pain.  Pain sends us a message about doing something about what is causing us discomfort.  Sin is the awareness and we need to and can always do better than we have done before.

Kalum:  So, being a sinner is not such a bad thing.

James:  Well, we don’t have to be proud of our sin but always learning from the condition of feeling inadequate.  Being a sinner is good, if it means were always looking to amend and improve our lives.

Connor:  The character of Christ comes from learning the power and freedom of impulse control.

Kalum:  I don’t think that we will ever graduate from the School of Sinners.

James:  Well, you really don’t want a diploma for sin; not really the life achievement that one wants to be proud of.   But the goodness of Christ is like knowledge and learning.  In the field of learning we are ignorant of what we have not yet learned.

Connor:  So we are always sinners because there is always more goodness to achieve.

Kalum: Well, now we know how baptism is like commencement; we are always ending something in order to begin something else.

James: At baptism we all have received our diploma in the school of Jesus.  And it is an important diploma.

Connor:  But it also means that we have to choose each day to live up to the standards of love and kindness that we’ve learned from Jesus Christ.

Kalum: We sure have our work cut out for us.

James:  Just think of it in this way; we will never be unemployed Christians, because there will always be more Christian things to do.

Connor:  Let us thank God today for our baptismal diplomas today!

Kalum: We are now guaranteed a life time of much more Christian work!  Let’s get to work!  Amen.