Latah Valley

1.  Accounts Payable & Accounts Receivable…

I’ve been thinking about “Accounts Payable”—and specifically about whether a person who works in “Accounts Payable” would get along with a person who works in “Accounts Receivable.”   Would one of them, for example, take the other one out to lunch?   And would they have any scruples about putting the bottle of wine on the expense voucher?   I pondered this for a full fifteen minutes until I realized, as per this morning’s passage, that all of us understand very early and very well how to pay people what we think they’re worth.   Let me say that again:  whether we’re shopping at Macy’s Department Store, or whether we’re simply talking to the alcoholic child of divorced parents, all of us understand how to pay off those who supply us with what we need, and each of us imagines what we believe the other person owes us.  

“You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill…”   When Marlin Brando offers this impromptu line as the warped Colonel Kurtz in the film Apocalypse Now, he’s not trying to be flippant.   He’s suggesting how the special agents, working for the CIA, during the Vietnam War, are really being manipulated by the system, and that system includes all of us.   We are errand boys, sent by the laws of supply and demand.   We are errand girls, sent by the needs we have to be affirmed and appreciated by our parents.   And, of course, if someone doesn’t get paid the respect or the love that we desperately need, we try to collect any way we can.  

“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves…”

I remember paying for my hamburger and fries in junior high school.   I was standing in line at the cash register, next to this latch key kid named Bobby Hanes.   We had been friends in grades one through six, but in seventh grade I set my sights on a different class of friends.   So, along with the dollar and fifty cents that I gave to the check-out lady, I gave to Bobby the abuse that I thought would elevate my own worth in the eyes of others.   It wasn’t worth it…

You see, the question that falls into our laps today is why the king in the parable chooses to settle accounts with his slaves.   Is it because he doesn’t think they can handle the job of calculating our debts and debtors?   And is it because the cumulative responsibility that we have for recognizing what a person’s worth is simply too heavy for us to bear?   I believe it is.   I believe that Matthew 18:24 declares that one day there will be a reckoning and on that day we will learn how we have failed to appreciate the precious relationships that we’ve been given.

2.  The Departmentalized Life

This month marks the second sad anniversary of the death of Kenneth Lay.   You may recall that in July of 2006, following his indictment for fraud and conspiracy, the disgraced CEO of the famously bankrupt Enron Corporation suffered a fatal heart attack.   And essentially what got the son of a poor Baptist preacher in trouble involved his uncanny ability to dump his own plummeting stock in the company while simultaneously telling his employees to buy more.   In effect, he departmentalized.   

Kenneth Lay, the personal investor, could do what he liked with his 42.4 million dollar salary.   I guess he felt as if he earned it.   But, you see, as the public officer of the company, he had no problems letting over 20,000 of his employees believe that everything was fine.   And did I mention that Kenneth Lay had been the son of a poor Baptist preacher?   And did I mention that over 1,200 guests attended his funeral and that all of them said this prayer out loud:

“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Or, actually, they conducted the memorial service at one of the largest United Methodist churches in Houston, Texas, which means they probably prayed it like this:

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Whatever the words—the point I’m trying to emphasize is no one is able to pay.   No Presbyterian.  No Methodist.   No CEO.  No poor minister’s son.   No latch key kid.   No fashion model.   No rock star.  No disabled vet.   No drug addict.  No slave, no servant, no satrap from Matthew 18, verses 22 to 32.   No one is able to pay.   But are we able to forgive?    That’s one of the questions that this story of Jesus leaves twisting in the wind.   Would we do it differently?   If the slave in verse 27 is forgiven the amount of 10,000 talents—if he is forgiven an amount equivalent to the revenue of a small country—and if he and his entire household can now go about their lives totally free of debt—and if he can then turn around and NOT forgive his fellow slave 100 denarii—WHAT ABOUT US?  

3.  What We Owe God:  Change!

I once knew the Dean of the Pharmacy Department at small town university.   He had attended church occasionally, usually on Christmas and on Easter, but after some kind of conversion moment in the Atlanta Airport things changed.   First, we noticed this department head in the front pew on almost every Sunday.  Second, he volunteered to teach the fourth graders for a week of Vacation Bible School.   Third, he came to me with a confession.   Long before becoming the head of the department and long before he graduated high school and received all his diplomas and degrees, this man had a been a young hood on a banana seat bicycle.   He had been that smart-mouthed wisenheimer who, just for kicks, would steal other kids’ milk money.   And he had also been that lost soul who broke into a church building and lifted a few dollars from the offering tray.   This last bit, of course, is really what bothered him the most.   And so, even though we prayed and even though I did my best to declare his forgiveness, this head of the department choose to write a check.   He sat there in my study and calculated the years of interest on the few dollars he had swiped as a child.   He filled in the amount, signed his name, placed it in an envelope and later sent the check. 

Now, I’m telling you this story because I’d like to take this opportunity to clear up any misconception.   You and I can never begin to pay God back.   In fact, from the very beginning of Jesus’ parable, that’s the first thing that we should get through our thick hearts.   What we owe God, through the Spirit of Jesus Christ, is not pay-back, but deep and abiding change.

4.  Bearing Fruit For All Depts.

You and I must change in such a way that all the departments of our lives bear the fruit of God’s overwhelming grace.   No category of people, no division of labor, no layer of bureaucracy should be able to deflect the potency and the power of the forgiveness we experience in Christ.   And if we’re ever in doubt of that, simply re-read what the king says to the slave who headed up his own department.   He says, “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?”  

Bear fruit for all depts.   That’s the dynamic that we don’t often see.   We see forgiveness in worship or while people are studying the Bible together.   But somehow, in the heat of the moment, we build these walls which are intended to keep God’s grace more manageable.

In David Kinnamon’s book, Unchristian, there’s a sub-section by Jonalyn Fincher where she reveals how she tried to manage things prior to her wedding to her fiancé, Dale: 

“One afternoon we were sorting out the next twenty tasks to complete.  He hadn’t called the bakery about the cake, and he still hadn’t finished his guest list.  With annoyance dripping out of every pore, I cut into him with all the shame and blame I could conjure up.   How dare he drop the ball and ruin my afternoon.  Now I would have to pick up after his incompetence!  

After my verbal assault, he sat quietly with disbelief and pain in his eyes.  I expected he would scold me for my tirade, but he didn’t.   All he said was, ‘Jonalyn, is that how you talk to yourself?’   I was silent, stunned. 

Then, slowly, I nodded and began to weep long and hard, realizing that this wasn’t the good life, it wasn’t the abundant life Jesus offered.   But it was the only way I knew to be a model Christian woman planning a model wedding…  To get anything done right, to be holy, to stay pure, to walk the straight and narrow, I condemned myself into obedience” (p. 203-4).

But, you see, maybe that’s not obedience after all.  

Maybe the only obedience that counts, truly counts, is the obedience that spills over our neat and tidy categories.   Maybe the only genuine obedience to God is the obedience that gushes out of the audacious accounting that balances every budget on the face of the earth.   We are a forgiven people.   10,000 times over we are forgiven, and so when we’re working or when we’re vacationing or relaxing with our friends or planning a wedding, we don’t have to get it exactly right.   We don’t have to insist that people pay us every ounce of respect that we deserve.   We don’t have to make people love us because we feel so worthless.   We don’t have to look for ways to be honored or to ‘redeem ourselves.’   (That’s a really unfortunate phrase.)

5.  Latah Valley Will Produce Fruit That Will Show Grace In A Variety of Settings

What we do have to get right, by contrast, is the grace.   There’s a scene in the Broadway production of Les Miserables, in which a paroled convict steals some silverware from a church.   The police capture Jean Valjean and take him back to the priest, who says that he’s been worried about Valjean, even since he forgot to take the candlesticks with him as well.   The police are beside themselves.   But when they leave, Valjean discovers the abundance of something that worth much more than silver.   “You no longer belong to evil.   I have ransomed you from a life of fear and hatred,” says the priest.   “Now I give you back to God.”  

And so, here we are at Latah Valley.   Would you like a candlestick?   Amen.

1.  Me And My Soul

On a slice of sand, next to a mountain lake, a small child approached a group of college students.  His mother was unmarried, and young like us; that’s all we knew.   So, trying to make the kid feel welcome, I teased him.  I teased him by pointing to his belly button and saying, “What’s that?”   This is the callous way that I had been hazed by my older siblings; so it seemed only fair for me to coax this impressionable toddler into looking down at his stomach and when he did, whamo!   Ever so gently I’d tweak his nose.   Well, not so fast.  As it turned out, his young mother had clued his son into the nature of these shenanigans.   She had even trained him in a response that would leave us dumbfounded.  No sooner had I pressed my fingertip against the stub of his umbilical cord, no sooner had I asked the question, did he declare without equivocation, “That’s My Jesus!   That’s My Jesus!  That’s My Jesus!”  

Of course, any pediatrician will tell you how children of that age are developmentally only capable of thinking in concrete terms.  The ability for abstract thinking and for drawing analogies comes along later.   And yet, knowing what I knew about his birth and about the odds that he might never meet his father—knowing all that—somehow inspired me.   And it still inspires.   What might it mean for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus to emanate not just from our thoughts, not just from our lips, but from “all that is within me.”

All that is within me.  That’s the original Hebrew definition of the word, nephesh or soul.   The ancient Greeks had a view of the soul that came along later.   Their idea was more abstract and more philosophical.    Folks like Plato and Aristotle, for example, thought of the soul as somehow detachable from the body.   The soul had to do with the immortal essence of the individual, usually a man of some standing in that society.   By contrast, for the Hebrew people,

the souls of each and every person had been created by God.   And even animals had souls.  Moreover, the nephesh  might even include the unique relationships that all living things have with one another—every  breath of experience, every spark of genuine emotion, every physical ounce of blood, sweat and tears—and all of it ordered and orchestrated by the act of the will. 

Montreal neurologist Wilder Penfield once performed an experiment.   The patient for the experiment remained conscious and alert while the scientist probed the brain with an electrical stimulus.   Every time Penfield touched an area of the brain, the person would respond by moving a limb or by recalling a memory.   Everything seemed to be right there, so easily manipulated by the tools of the research, mere biology at the mercy of machinery and medicine.   And yet, what fascinated Penfield was how the patient could tell whether or not his brain functions had been triggered from the outside.   He would say, for example, “You did that.  I didn’t.”  

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless God’s holy name.” 

2.  Who Is The Lord Whom The Soul Blesses

So, where, we might ask the writer of Psalm 103, did that come from?   Is that blessing stimulated by an electrical stimulus?   Is it something that we say or pray willingly or under duress?  Did we really decide to bless the Lord all on our own?   Today’s passage answers YES.   Without any prompting or external pressure, the soul summons the soul to bless the Lord.   Blessing the Lord, in fact, is what the soul has been made to do from the very dawn of time.   But for almost that long, the soul has also been free to decide who it wants to bless and who it wants to curse.  

Death Cab For Cutie is the name of a group of musicians who stumble upon this scenario without really trying to bless at all.  The lead singer croons about a loved one who may soon die.   He compares “heaven and hell” to a chain of hotels who may have illuminated their NO VACANCY signs.   He’s disappointed in the “Roman Rule” of the “ladies in black,” who taught him that “fear is the heart of love.”   But then comes this passionate promise:

“If there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks, I will follow you into the dark.”  

Now, at first glance, someone listening to that song on the radio might assume it’s not about God at all.   But, you see, that’s where your soul joins the melody.   And that’s where my soul joins in the chorus.   Bless the Lord, O my soul.   All that is within me bless his holy name.   In Christ, no soul is abandoned to the dark.  

3.  Benefits We Are Prone To Forget

Think of it like a binding contract.   In the Bible, of course, ninety-nine percent of all the blessing that happens in the world comes at God’s initiative.   God confers the power of life upon Abraham and through him all the families of the earth will be blessed (Genesis 12).   In Deuteronomy 28 this one-sided arrangement is clarified.   Yahweh will indeed bless the nation of Israel, but only insofar as the Hebrew people will remember what God has already done for them.   Sadly, Psalm 103 has been written because the solitary individual is prone to forget.   Individual souls, who experience separation or a severing of relationship forget the benefits of being a community of God’s blessed people.   And now, through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you and I must make no mistake.   These benefits are for us:  

• The Lord Who forgives—The Moral Benefit

• The Lord Who heals—The Physical Benefit

• The Lord Who redeems—The Existential Benefit

• The Lord Who satisfies—The Fringe Benefit

I have designated this last one as fringe for two reasons.  First, because I think it’s a strange benefit to be “satisfied with good.”   And second, it’s not exactly clear how good might be defined.   Who actually determines the good by which we’re satisfied?   Is it good to go sailing in a yacht?   Sure it is.   But it also may be good to feed a homeless person.   Something like that might be God’s fringe benefit.

4.   Bless From Our Own Angle of The Universe

But here’s another one.  Gordon Atkinson describes how he watched a little girl in blue shoes cross the street while the traffic jam of commuters waited.  “She stepped off the curb with exaggerated caution,” he writes,

“like she was sticking a toe in cold water.   Halfway across, something on the ground caught her eye, and she bent over to look at it.  The crossing guard had to beep her whistle and give her a head jerk to keep her moving…  And then I swear she used three different walks to get to the other side.  There was a skippy little pony-walk, a bunny-hop or two, and finally some kind of slap-happy thing that I’m pretty sure is from a Bugs Bunny cartoon… Little blue shoes girl, you do not know who you are, but we know and we are struck dumb…  Some of us do not believe in souls and do not like to throw words like ‘eternal’ around carelessly, but we can’t deny that you are the most amazing thing we have ever seen…” (Real Live Preacher, p. 96, 97). 

Now, at this juncture, someone may accuse Gordon Atkinson and me of being overly-sentimental—of reducing the profound idea of the soul to something as trite as a little girl going to school.   Is that really the fringe benefit that’s supposed to satisfy us as long as we live?   Well, it depends.   I guess it depends upon whether we decide to offer to God our own particular angle on the universe.   I guess it depends upon whether we imagine God to be interested in little girls with blue shoes or little boys who conceal Jesus beneath a belly button.   I guess it depends on whether God’s interested in the morally confused or the diseased or the disabled or the depressed or the dying.   And I guess it depends upon whether we can summon up enough soul-filled vision to see what the Lord God of Israel and the Covenant God of the Universe would like us to see and to recall for him day after day and night after night.

5.   Latah Valley Will Bear Fruit that Re-calls

Last week I went to visit Chuck Gulick at the hospital.   He was right in the middle of a chemotherapy treatment and I could tell he was tired and little nauseous.   Chuck, as many of you know, has been through this before.  Up until last February or so, he had been receiving treatment and we thought the lymphoma had gone into remission.   We thought it did.   But it didn’t.   And so, I sat there with his wife, Pat, and together we prayed for strength and for peace and for endurance.   We prayed about the present and the nurses in the room and we prayed about the past and we prayed about the future.   And when we had finished praying, Chuck wept and I excused myself.   Later, two days after that prayer, I called.   Chuck had been sent home and was feeling better.  

He said, “I’ve been thinking about my role at this point?”

“Your role?”

“Yeah, about what I should be doing, about what’s important… what my resources are…”

I started to say something but stopped myself.   And then, from the receiver of my wireless cell phone, I heard someone’s soul.   “Grateful…”   Chuck recalled how God had brought him through the previous round of chemo.   He recalled what God had done.  Amen.

1.  Training the Brain To Bear Fruit

The human brain plays tricks on us.  And to insure that I haven’t been duped already, let me repeat that:  The human brain plays tricks on us, and these tricks are premised on the way our thinking organ has been trained through things like the environment, the culture and the family upbringing we’ve received.   For example, suppose we’re shown a pot of boiling hot water.   The human brain tells us that if we touch that pot we’ll burn our fingers.  So we invent oven mitts and other utensils in order that we handle the pot and not experience that pain.   The over-arching category for the oven mitt is what we call technology.   The human brain, among other things, is known for its use of technology to avoid pain and inconvenience and to maximize comfort and personal safety.   But, suppose, once we’ve been trained in this way, someone comes along to suggest that sometimes we ought not to avoid pain.   Sometimes, what’s comfortable is not the best way to go.

There’s a scene in the Harry Potter series, in which a teacher at the Hogwarts school attempts to train the young wizard in the art of defending himself mentally.   Professor Snape is concerned because he has seen Harry Potter’s thoughts invaded by the Dark Lord, Voldemort.   So, as a means of training, the teacher repeatedly intrudes upon the teenager’s most private and pleasant memories.   When Harry remembers kissing a girl, there’s Snape.  When Harry remembers a tender moment with his parents, there’s Snape.   And it seems that no amount of training will be able to prevent both the outside interference and the inner conflict.  

You see, I’m bringing up this magical mind-game because I think it pertains to the mental conditioning that we’ve received for over two hundred years of United States history.   For instance, right there in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, we read that we have been “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”   This is the training we have received—that God has all but guaranteed us a lifetime in which we ought to pursue own our personal happiness above all else.   Moreover, within that happiness, it is assumed that we need not contemplate death, nor consider the possibility of being anyone’s slave.   Again, this is the way our brains have been trained for over two-hundred years and that training is not all bad.   But what if, over two-thousand years ago, someone offered up an entirely different sort of training:

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” (v. 3—5).  

2.  Having the Mind of Christ

In the Anne Rice novel, Christ The Lord; the Road to Cana, the author of horrific vampire books tries her hand at the mind of Christ.   She actually imagines the possibility that Jesus of Nazareth had grown up, day-dreaming about a young woman in village.   Her name is Avagail, and every time Jesus considers marrying her and living happily, the world’s problems intrude.   There is the severe oppression of the Roman Empire.   And there is the violent behavior of the bandits who live in the hills of Judea.   And yet, why should Jesus let these harsh realities steal his own pursuit of personal happiness?  

This seems to be the question that Anne Rice wants to raise, especially as she re-frames the familiar story of Jesus, turning water into wine.   You and I may read John, chapter two, and not blink an eye.   But when Anne Rice reflects upon the wedding at which Jesus performs his first miracle, she wonders who’s getting married, and did the young carpenter know her personally?   Could this have been Avagail’s wedding?   And if so, the miracle of the water’s transformation pales in comparison to the anguish that Jesus may have experienced in saying goodbye, in actually renouncing what his own brain had conditioned him to desire.   He would have done this, of course, in connection with his temptations in the wilderness and with lots of other painful moments, all of which will culminate on the cross in Jerusalem.   And so, with the help of Anne Rice and Harry Potter, we can map out the neurons of what it might mean to bear fruit with the mind of Christ.  It means, when we’re empty—God can fill us.

·        When We’re Empty

        And here’s a quick quote on that first part from Sue Monk Kidd:

        “We’re containers filled with an ego elixir we’ve brewed ourselves.  When the heat is      turned up inside and the old begins to burn away, we must offer God the handle and                 the spout of our lives.  God tips us over and pours us out… We’re emptied so that we       can be re-filled with new and living waters” (When The Heart Waits, p. 150).

·        God Can Fill Us

        Now, what needs to be emphasized about this filling is that it’s         supernatural.  God doesn’t fill us with more ideas or with better    ideas, but with an ability to hold two opposing ideas in tension.  For     example, “work out your own salvation” AND “God is at work in you    to will and to work for his good pleasure.”  

3.  No Competition

You see, it’s perfectly natural for you and me to pit those two ideas against one another.  The human brain has been trained in this kind of competitive ritual for generations.   Every other generation there’s some famous person who says that the survival of humankind is all up to us, that we have to work harder at ushering in God’s kingdom.   Alternatively, every other (other) generation, there’s some famous person who says that there’s nothing to be done, that I’m okay and you’re okay and that we really shouldn’t get too worked up about anything…  But what if God fills us up with the supernatural ability, not to resolve that tension?   What might that look like if we learn to live, or to lose ourselves, in that paradox?   In a kingdom that’s coming whether we like it or not?   And in a kingdom that won’t come without us?

In ninth grade, Kenny Pitts and I ran track.   We were both in pretty good shape, but Kenny could outrun me on the mile.   At an early season practice, the coach had us do some training, in which a bunch of us would take turns leading the others around the quarter mile oval.   We would take turns, but the guys behind us would have the option of pushing us to dig deeper.   So, imagine my surprise and my gut-wrenching, side-splitting pain, when Kenny Pitts came up on my heels and said, “Pick up the pace.”   He said it so matter-of-factly, without showing any strain whatsoever, almost like he was walking his dog.   On the other hand, my brain was playing tricks on me.  I could not go any faster without busting an abdominal muscle.   Surely, Kenny would let me coast.  But, alas, he didn’t. 

4.  Almost Famous

“Pick up the pace” came the message again over my right shoulder.   And I am almost ashamed to tell you what happened next.  What happened next, to my surprise, was that I did go faster.   In fact, as a team, we burned our way to the finish line, with Kenny prodding and pushing us to go even faster.  We did it and the coach cheered his approval, his good pleasure.   But, after that painful practice, I quit.   I quit because I knew that I wasn’t the best.   And I quit because I didn’t want to do all that work and endure all that agony if I couldn’t be the natural athlete that Kenny Pitts seemed to be.   So, in the spring of my ninth grade in high school, I stayed home, ate chips, drank soda and watched television.  

And, you see, my point in relating this incident is the comparison that we might make with bearing fruit in the name of Christ.   To be sure, Jesus Christ is now famous, and millions of Christians worship and adore him to this very moment.  Moreover, it’s also true that many non-Christians and so-called seekers revere and respect him.  But the victory of the mind of Christ is not his fame.  It’s that he endured when he was almost famous.  It’s that he persevered and used his own God-given freedom to make himself a slave and to suffer a slave’s death.   What about you?   Can you hear the message that comes in the wind as you make the turn toward home?

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited…”

5.  Latah Must Lose in Order For God To Infuse With Power

Thursday night, a group of us fanned out among the streets and sidewalks of the Eagle Ridge community.   We carried door-hangers, with literature about Latah Valley.   And we began the evening with a prayer and some instructions.  The instructions involved sticking to the highlighted streets and making sure the good side of the pamphlets were visible.   Anyway, after dropping off Philip and Robbie Mimms, I realized that I didn’t have my map.   Sheryl called me and said that her cell phone was losing battery power.   I drove back to the site to look for my map but couldn’t find it.   Everything seemed so confusing.   And I thought to myself, What’s the use!   Won’t all these pieces of paper just find their way into the waste basket?   Why am I knocking myself out?  

So, eventually I got in gear and started distributing the door-hangers on my route.  Others were doing the same thing.   When we were half-way done, I saw someone else who told me he was finished.   Finished?  How could you be finished?   I kept going.  Brian Hiller helped me complete my section on the map.   But here’s the moment I really want to emphasize for you.   As I approached a doorway, this man I had met last year came outside with a glass of whiskey in his hand.  I mentioned the new church and he held up his hands as if to say, keep that kryptonite away from me.   Then, it dawned on me.  “You’re the guy who worked for the tel-evangelist, Benny Hinn…  You’re the guy I talked to last year.”   He nodded and let out this big sigh.   “God bless you, brother,” I said.   And leaving his packet on the doorstep, I kept going.  

In the contest to save souls and heal bodies, Latah Valley may lose to Benny Hinn and to a host of other flamboyant folks.  But that just may be how we finish the race.  

1.  The Gifts of Time & Space

It came to me in a rush of adrenaline, like the moment a roller coaster peaks and begins to descend down a steep track.   This roller coaster, however, came in the form of a vivid memory.  Years after it occurred, I remembered the night Grover Wickenden had us over to his house.  I remembered the flaming candles in the dining room, the small nook of a kitchen overflowing with steam and delicious smoke.   And I remembered this elderly gentleman who wanted to be our friend…  He had lived on Main Street since moving to the area as the Director of the YMCA.   He moved there with his wife, Rome, and their blended families.   He moved there after a previous marriage had failed allegedly because of the long, cold winters in Vermont.  He moved there before Rome became ill and died in her sleep, and before the kids grew up and moved away.   Grover cooked for us, poured wine for us and smiled at us across the table where he would eventually, well after that night, collapse in a bundle of weary, but joyous, bones.   And, you see, in remembering the warm hospitality of that man, I’m about to suggest to you this morning how God plants seeds for his kingdom. 

God plants seeds for his kingdom through the gifts of time and space.   Let me repeat that using a different phrase: 

“I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.”    

Parabolein in the Greek, means to throw alongside, and so this is how I imagine it happening.   In between both the major and minor experiences of our lives, before and after, the Spirit of Christ sows the ways that we might remember those experiences.   The Spirit throws down upon the ground various frameworks by which we might make sense of things.   And those frameworks, according to the three parables in this morning’s passage, all involve the gifts of time and space.  

2.  How Jesus Recommends We Use Them

Of course, time and space often do not seem like gifts at all.  When the downtown meeting starts at five o’clock and we have to do three or four different chores before negotiating the traffic on the South Hill, there doesn’t seem to be enough time.   When you’re flying on United Airlines and the plane is packed, your space in the middle seat, near the lavatory, doesn’t seem like a gift.   And yet, in spite of the limitations we feel, Jesus recommends that accept and approve the following images:

• The weeds, which limit the growth of the healthy wheat. 
• The smallness of the mustard seed, which may be consumed by birds; and
• The tedious work of the woman, who must mix the yeast into the flour.

Each of these images plunges us back into the material world of time and space.   There’s no way to escape them.   There is no way to grab God’s secrets out of the sky.  The only choice, according to Jesus, is that make use of the gifts of time and space.

For example, the story is told of a father and his adult son who are estranged and not talking to one another.   This quiet feud goes on for years until the father decides to give his son his inheritance early.   He gives him a leather-bound Bible, which is the Dad’s way of trying to frame their relationship in terms of forgiveness and hope.

Unfortunately, the son’s response is not too hopeful.   With a sense of great resentment, he tosses the book to the back of his closet only to retrieve it years later.    Then, after all that time and all that space, with estranged children of his own, the son breaks down like a little boy and weeps bitter tears when he notices a yellowing note and a check that had been tucked in between the pages of the Bible.   The note read simply, “Forgive me.”   And the check had been made out in the amount of the son’s full inheritance.   All that time.   And all that space.  Jesus recommends that we use those gifts—as limited as they are—to try to understand why our lives consist of these relationships and not others.   Why these?   And not others?

3.  Time To Discern Good From Evil

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away” (Matthew 13:24,25).

You see, if there were ever a time when we might want to start over, from scratch, this would be it.   If there were ever a time when we might like to rip out by the roots everyone who might stand in our way, this would be it.  

My father once decided that he didn’t like the weeds growing next to our driveway.   So, like an astute mechanic, he began to bring home these old cans of motor oil.   After work, we’d see him spattering the black sludge onto the weeds.   But, when some of the oil spilled onto the azaleas instead, we ended up killing the flower bushes and having to blacktop everything that grew.

“Let both of them grow together until harvest…”   That’s not only good advice to the slaves in charge of the wheat and the weeds.   It’s also wise counsel to those who strive to live faithfully amid the evil influences that appear to be growing up all around us.   Our tendency, of course, might be wipe everything out, to yank up by the roots all the bad choices and bitter decisions and to totally cut ourselves off from those who make them.  To counteract this knee-jerk moralistic reaction, Jesus offers time—not time to purge and to purify others—but time to discern just how entangled we are.

4.  Space To Dream About Branching Out

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of all shrubs and becomes a tree” (v. 31, 32).

Now, before leaping into this next parable, I think it’s important to ask about the smallest or the most rudimentary aspect of faith.   Is it our adherence to the Ten Commandments?   Is it the desire to go to heaven when we die?   Or is it something so small that we sometimes overlook it entirely?

There’s an old episode of The Waltons, in which a new preacher comes to town, talking about sin.   He doesn’t so much talk about God, but about how swimming on the Sabbath day leads to sin and how dancing and playing cards and so forth are morally dangerous.   And then, through a series of bizarre circumstances, this same preacher finds himself sitting in the parlor of these two quaint sisters.   These elderly women are the guardians of their father’s secret herbal recipe, and to be polite, the preacher partakes of the beverage.  

He drinks and he drinks what turns out to be moonshine whiskey until he’s totally intoxicated.   Grampa Walton then drives him back into town where everyone can see how drunk he is.  Miss. Prism, the church’s self-appointed control freak, decides she’s going to weed out the false preacher.   And apparently she does.   Until John Boy and his father barge into the tent revival and declare how they are interested in what this diminished preacher has to say. “I’m a sinner,” he begins.   And from that small point all he needs are the gifts of time and the space to dream about branching out.   And maybe, just maybe, he needs one more thing.

5.  Mixing It Up Without Losing What It Is…

“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of flour…” (v. 33).

Again, let’s pause for a moment and consider the smallest component of faith in Christ.   Isn’t it that we are forgiven sinners?   And, of course, if we are forgiven sinners, that means the only difference between us and the rest of the world is that we believe it.   Moreover, the point of all this belief in God’s mercy is not to set ourselves apart from all the big and bad people in the world, but to mix into those spheres of influence the possibility that the world is bending toward forgiveness.   “In Christ,” declares 2 Corinthians 5:19, “God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.”

6.  The Proximate Presence of God’s Reign

Words like these, you see, make it difficult for us to adhere to the theories of Edward T. Hall, who in 1966 launched a new field of study, known as Proxemics.   Proxemics analyzes how a person’s personal space will affect those nearby.   Personal space varies from culture to culture and from context to context.   But before we head too far down of you and I feeling threatened or feeling comforted by the amount of distance we maintain between us—could there be another kind of space that we’ve lost sight of?

7.  Latah Valley—All The Space & Time That We Need

On Thursday morning, Amy Diehl and Jill Wright came to the Latah Valley site to help clean the house and they brought with them their children.   There was Aiden and Tristan Wright and there was Ainsley and McLain Diehl.   Anyway, upon their arrival I heard them talking about going to the “secret room,” where they crawled around and played for about an hour. 

Then, when they came outside, I couldn’t resist.   Rather than working more on this message, I asked the parents if I could walk the kids down to the creek.   They said it was okay and so we slide down the steep slope and threw rocks and sand for about twenty minutes.   Back at the house, McLain sat down on the grass to empty pebbles out of his shoes.   He smiled and I heard him say, “Who thought that was fun?”   I turned and before I could raise my hand, all four of them had their hands in the air.

Is that personal space?   Is that quality time?   No, none of the above.   It’s all the time and the space that we need to grow up into the kingdom people that God intends us to be.

Amen.

1.  The Perspective of The Sower

When it comes to perspectives, everybody has one.   The homeless man on the street corner has a perspective.   The multi-million dollar heiress has a perspective.   The recently widowed father of three children has a perspective.   The abused wife has a perspective.   The immigrant from Russia has a perspective.  The paraplegic has a perspective.   The teenager addicted to drugs has a perspective.   The valedictorian has a perspective.   And on and on.   Everybody has been endowed with a unique perspective, a specialized vantage point, from which to view the world.   And yet, as human beings who have been created in the image of God, you and I are also free to imagine the perspectives of others.

Stephen Covey, in his best selling book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, describes a commuter train ride in which these small children had been going crazy.   Their father sat idly by as three boys and one girl jumped up and down on the seats, screamed at one another, throw toys across the aisle…   At any rate, another person on the train became disgruntled and approached the man.  He said, Excuse me, sir, but could you please take control of your children.   Just then, the father woke up as if from a trance.  He had been staring out the window, oblivious to the commotion.   He said, “I’m sorry.  We just came from the hospital, where my wife just died.   I guess they don’t know quite how to handle it.   I’m not sure I do either.”  

And you see, with that revelation, the disgruntled passenger, sitting next to that raucous family, begins to imagine life from a different perspective.   His perspective, your perspective and my perspective, of course, belong uniquely to each of us.   No one can truly understand what it’s like to be you, nor you to be me.   But, when we collide with one another on the train, or at the hospital, or by the sea, the possibility of another point of view washes over us.    

“Listen!”  That’s how Jesus gets the attention of the crowds by the sea.   Each has come with his or her own perspective.   And yet, for a few moments, this teacher from Nazareth, challenges all of them to share the purposes, the plans and possibilities of “a sower… out to sow” (Matthew 13:3).   And what might that imagined perspective mean?   Well, in the first century, Palestinian farmers didn’t have the equipment necessary to cultivate their land like the farmers in Washington State.   So, rather than tilling or treating the soil with insecticide and fertilizer, sowers became very adept at broadcasting their seed.   That is to say, they did it indiscriminately and liberally.  In fact, if you try, you can almost see them, slinging these little spheres of potential growth in all directions around.   And what distinguishes them from their contemporary counterparts is that these farmers don’t worry about where the seed lands.  From the perspective of a sower, all that matters is the possibility of good soil.   Somewhere out there, amid the path, the rock and the thorn, somewhere a far-flung seed will find a place to truly grow. 

2.   Conditions on the Ground Mitigate The Gospel

Now, if we successfully assume the perspective of a sower in the time of Jesus of Nazareth, there will be a critical point at which we may wonder why we’ve done it.   William Willimon tells about the parents of a certain student who had just graduated from Duke University.   They made an appointment with the chaplain to complain.   “All we ever wanted for our daughter was for her to be was a good Presbyterian.   All we ever wanted was for her to get good grades, get a good job, get married to a nice man and perhaps go to worship on Sunday.   That’s all we ever wanted…  And here you’ve encouraged her to waste her life as a missionary to Kenya.”  

“I’m sorry,” replied Willimon.  “You’ll have to take up your concerns with Jesus.”   “All I did was cast the seed…”

You see, one of the reasons that we might want to indulge in the perspective of a sower is that the conditions we face in broadcasting the gospel are similar.   In other words, if our God-given and Spirit-informed goal involves the transformed life of a person who re-prioritizes her concerns according the message of forgiveness and new life in Christ—if that’s what we’re doing at Latah Valley—then we should not be surprised if merely one in four people will respond the way we hope they will.   One in four.  According to the teaching of Jesus, twenty-five percent of the gospel seed will yield the abundance of fruit that the Spirit intends.  

3.  Four Soils Correspond to Four Dynamic Responses.

What are we to make of those calculations?   Are they too low?  Are those implied figures more pessimistic than we might have assumed Jesus to be?   Or, could it be that he’s actually more hopeful than we can possibly imagine?   To answer any of these questions, we need to review the way in which the four soils in the parable correspond to four dynamic responses to the gospel message.   First, I want to suggest that the path, where “the birds came and ate” up the seed, bears a striking resemblance to the crowds who eat the bread of Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the five thousand, but who don’t stay with him.   Second, when it comes to the rocky ground, the rich young ruler appears to be growing at a steady rate until Jesus asks him to sell all his possessions and “follow me.”   At this point, whatever had been growing actually hits a rock and dries up.  Third, in thinking about the thorns, I can’t help but notice the number of pet projects or political programs that Judas Iscariot, among other zealots, often allows to become intertwined with the gospel.   Eventually, these abrasive weeds begin to take over.   And that, of course, leaves the fourth and final type of soil, which the parable designates as “good.”   Good soil is considered good simply because it yields “a hundred fold… sixty fold… thirty fold.”   And what’s interesting about these numbers is that the largest one appears first in the sequence.   In other words, Jesus is not talking about the inevitable progress of belief; but he is talking about a sudden burst of abundant fruit… fruit that will sustain us over lesser yields.

In 1 Corinthians 15:20 and 23, the apostle Paul picks up on the same language, when he’s referring to the resurrection.   He writes,

“But each in his own order:  Christ the first fruits, then at his coming, those who belong to Christ.”

4.   Do Not Be Satisfied With Anything But…

Now I don’t want to make too much of this connection except to emphasize how in God’s glorious future there will be an abundance of good fruit in the form resurrected relationships.   And where, you may ask, does this abundance of good fruit get started?   Well, it starts with the meager one in four response that we get here and now in places like Latah Valley.  

When I traveled to northern India with my mentor Jim DiRaddo, he would bring up the news about these mass conversions to the Christian faith.   We had heard reports about 20,000 and 30,000 people turning to Christ, and in a predominately Hindu culture this is a major claim.   Anyway, during our discipleship training programs, Jim would always ask, “Where are they?”   Where are the 20,000 or 30,000?   And his point, I think, is that some of these are like the seed that falls on the path and some are like the seed that falls on the rocky terrain and some are like the seed that falls amid the thorns.   So, why congratulate ourselves with those huge numbers when the real growth happens at a rate of one in four?   Why satisfy ourselves with the abstract figures of those who commit to the label of being Christian, when the real growth happens long after people have stopped counting. 

Every once in a while I love to imagine life and death from the perspective of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.   Bonhoeffer is well worth a Google search on the Internet.   And if you are thorough in your search you’ll learn how this prominent German professor of theology would not settle for the Nazi-version of the gospel.   In other words, when many local churches ignored or encouraged the harsh treatment of the Jews because of their ancestors’ harsh treatment of Christ, Bonhoeffer kept sowing seeds of radical trust, in spite of differences in race or religion.   Later, as Hitler rose to power, Bonhoeffer took a trip to the United States and cast the same seed among the churches of Harlem.  Friends pleaded with him to remain in New York, but he returned to Germany and immediately began a series of radio broadcasts, denouncing the distortions of the Third Reich.   Eventually the Gestapo shut the station down, and hauled the pastor away.   In prison after prison he wrote letters and poems, sending them out to family members, friends and his fiancé.   And then, finally, just prior to his hanging in Flossenburg, Bonhoeffer did this amazing thing.   In the prison cell, next to his, a man had been crying about his impending execution in the morning.   Bonhoeffer told the man to put his hand on the wall and prayed.   The next day, a guard, who had become sympathetic to Bonhoeffer told him the news:  “I thought you’d like to know.  The inmate you prayed for last night.   He went to his death peacefully, without a whimper, with a prayer on his lips.”      

5.  Believe in the Possibility of Good Soil & Keep Broad-Casting That Gospel Seed.  

You see, here in this multi-purpose room, it’s difficult to imagine the perspective of a sower like that—a sower who faces prison walls and immanent execution and yet still keeps sowing seed.   It’s difficult to imagine the possibility of good soil when so many advise us to settle for something less.  

This week, the facilities services specialist called to inform me that Latah Valley could no longer store its signs at the school.  I told her that Craig, the custodian here, had given us permission, but that we’d come and get them.   Craig then called and apologized and proceeded to go one step further.  He contacted the boss of the facilities specialist and explained the situation—that our signs wouldn’t be used to coerce people or to defy the separation of church and state.   Craig shared how he believed that Latah Valley was good for the school and good for the community and good for the commuters driving by on Sunday morning… Good… Good… Good…  You see, something in him is growing.  And it’s growing from the ground up.   Thank Christ for that.

Amen.

1.     First, Second & Third Impressions…

We know the old saying.   Over years of training and through countless subliminal messages, we’ve had it drummed into our hearts, into our minds and perhaps into our souls.   Occasions for reinforcing the old saying arise in job interviews, business deals, social circles, blind dates and more.   And so, without further adieu, here is the old saying:

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Now if this statement turns out to be true, or an accurate reflection of the way things are, I’d like to point out how damning and how demoralizing it can be.   Somewhere in the distant past, for instance, there’s a Christian Fellowship Gathering for college students.   Over 80 of my peers are gathered, singing songs of praise.   During a time for greeting one another, I observe a beautiful young woman approach from across the room.   She extends her hand first to my roommate, which gives me the opportunity to hear these words, “Hello, my name is Kathy.”   Then, as I also turn to shake her hand, I simply repeat what I have just heard, “Hello, my name is Kathy.”   Kathy then responds, “Isn’t that funny?  That’s my name too.”

You see, something like that happening to us might be the kiss of death, socially speaking.   If first impressions are all we’ve got, our only hope may be to make no impression whatsoever.

But, this morning, my ultimate hope is that we might see a connection between embarrassing disasters like the one that I just described and the life and ministry of the church.   Is it true, to start with, that Jesus of Nazareth always made a good first impression?   And can we explain the rise of the Christian faith in terms of the apostles always making a good first impression?   Based upon today’s passage in Matthew 7, my answer is NO.   Neither Jesus, nor his followers, could claim a winning streak of absolutely perfect first impressions.   What they relied upon to grow the movement, by contrast, were second impressions and third impressions and maybe more—because those seem to be the moments—those seem to be the seasons—when the trees that we’ve planted only begin to grow fruit.  

2.     Don’t Be Impressed With The Tree Alone.

Gordon Atkinson is among those who now realize that we cannot allow ourselves to be impressed with the tree alone.   In a collection of blogs that he wrote, called RealLive Preacher.com., he claims that most people in the United States only know “Christianity from bad books, TV preachers and the people who watch them.”   In other words, given the time it takes to generate fruit, the vast majority of onlookers will assume that the tree of belief is all there is.  with the tree of belief itself.   That guy knows what he believes.   She really has all the answers.   And yet, today’s passage would make us wonder. 

I wonder, for example, what kind of behavior or what kind of relationships will be produced by that man’s mere belief in God.

I wonder what kind of actions or attitudes will arise from that woman’s shrill certainty.   Atkinson describes a new mother of two children, who has been diagnosed with breast cancer.   As a person of faith, Jenny had asked the hospital chaplain to pray for one simple thing.  Holding up a needle point pillow, she said,

“I know I’m going to die… I need time to finish this.  It’s for my kids.   Pray with me that God will give me the strength to finish it.”

Atkinson did of course pray for the needlepoint pillow and in his words he called to mind how the children of this dying woman might cherish this thing, how they might sleep with it, how it might be put on display at her daughter’s wedding.   He prayed and believed that God would answer—how could he not?   However, a few days later doctors and nurses crowded into Jenny’s room while she suffered violent convulsions.   She died as Atkinson watched helplessly.   And the last thing that he saw as he shut the door was “the unfinished needlepoint lying on the floor” (p. 14).  

You see, at first glance, an experience like that might destroy someone’s faith.   But mere belief in God is not as impressive when we’ve held hands with Jenny in the hospital.   What is impressive, however, is the perseverance of faith in spite of the lack of coherence.  “Every good tree bears good fruit.”   Wait and see what happens when your faith is asked to bear something. 

3.   Don’t Be Impressed With Any Kind of Fruit.

In the Clyde Edgerton novel, Killer Diller, a young orphan from the wrong side of the tracks has been transformed into the poster child for a Christian University in the south.   Wesley is given a full scholarship to the school in exchange for his promoted appearances on behalf of the institution.   Crowds of alumni, prospective students and financial backers are all impressed with his spiritual and moral transformation.   Wesley in fact epitomizes the very fruit for which this college would like to be known.   And yet, what also becomes obvious is that neither the faculty, nor the administration, nor the many of his supposed peers, genuinely care for Wesley.    And they aren’t really that interested when Wesley raises questions.   Rather, they use their relationship with him in pursuit of other goals.

Now, I’m relating the story of this novel to illustrate the difference between good fruit and bad fruit.   Don’t be impressed with just any fruit.   For example:  All the adulation and accolades in the world cannot displace the genuine trust and the mutual love that Jesus commands us to demonstrate to those who come from the wrong side of the tracks.   Programs and ministries that attempt to sell themselves by using people may actually bear fruit, but in the end, it will not be the kind of fruit we’re looking for, or the kind of fruit that will last.   Verse 19 puts it like this:  “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown in the fire.”

Now, when I read verse 19, I was reminded of two passages where something similar is expressed.   One occurs in Matthew 3:10 with John the Baptist, when he is calling people to repentance, or to a change of mind.   The other, however, occurs with the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:13—15, when he declares that the work we do, the teaching we do, “will be revealed with fire.”   The worker himself or the teacher herself may be saved, “but only as through fire.”  

“Fire,” in these passages, is the operative word.   And yet, before we get all medieval and assume that fire refers to God’s judgment alone, take another look.   What God intends to burn off and otherwise utterly destroy are the trees which bear bad fruit, or to break down doctrines and ideas and ideologies which do not foster forgiveness and reconciliation.   Wesley’s Christian University, if it refuses to change, will not have the legacy it dreams of.  

4. Latah Valley Celebrates Fruit Which May Not Initially Impress.

And so, this is why, at Latah Valley, we’d like to cultivate something more than mere belief in God.   We’d like to cultivate the good fruit of belief in God’s mercy.   We’d like to do something more than produce increasing numbers, or even a coziness among those here.   At Latah Valley, we will declare how God changes hearts, minds, bodies AND behaviors AND relationships AND how sometimes the initial impression we have of that change will not impress. 

5.   But We Will Recognize It Eventually As Good.

This last statement, I will admit, brings me to my knees.   And it will probably become my prayer on behalf of all of us for years to come.   Dear God, help us to recognize the full fruit that you are growing and producing as GOOD.   Help us to recognize.

Some of you may have read or heard about the film-version of that scene of recognition in the Nicholas Sparks’ novel, The Notebook.   Noah and his wife, Allie, live in a nursing home.   They are both getting on in years.   But the tragic truth is that Allie suffers from Alzheimer’s; she can’t remember Noah; she can’t remember her marriage, her children’s faces, her grandchildren…   And Allie cannot recall the torrid, romantic adventure that helped her to choose Noah over another more affluent gentleman.   She can’t remember a thing about her own life.   But she does occasionally enjoy hearing this strange elderly man read to her from the notebook.   Anyway, in spite of doctors telling Noah to give up hope of Allie recognizing him, he reads.   And at the end of what of these readings, Allie blushes.   “That’s a good story,” she says.   “That’s our story…” 

Well, believe it or not, this simple scene illustrates my prayer for Latah Valley.   Every week we gather to hear the story.   And I pray for recognition.   I pray that you and I will eventually see the fruit, and we will say, “That’s a good story… That’s our story…”  Amen.

Today’s passage is considered a “Wisdom Psalm,” and that implies that of all the categories that we have for the 150 Psalms, categories that include the Royal Psalm, the Lament Psalm and the Thanksgiving Psalm, of all those categories, the very first one that we have in this hodge-podge collection of prayers begins with a commentary on everyday life experience.   Wisdom comes from our reflection upon life experience, and that’s why Psalm 1 doesn’t start with God or with a specific historic person like Abraham or Moses of David.   Right out of the gate, Psalm 1 describes for us the life of the blessed person.   And let’s be honest, it’s almost as if we’ve been invited to fill-in-the-blank here with our own names. 

Blessed is ______________ who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night.

Not too long ago, someone that I know very well forgot to put his name on a few of his math assignments.   On the top of the paper there had been a space allocated for the student’s name, but repeatedly this person just launched into the work, skipped the place for his signature, completed and solved every problem, and then rushed to turn it in.   Of course, this became such a chronic pattern that the teacher threatened not to give the student credit for his work.   She wanted to train him that part of the assignment involved personally and publicly identifying one’s self with one’s performance.   And this morning I’m suggesting that this is exactly what we must do in hearing Psalm 1.  

You and I must put our names upon this passage and not let the words float above our heads.   We have to intentionally not follow the advice of those who promise us easy advantage and selfish gain.   We have to commit ourselves to not standing in “the way of sinners.”   And finally, when the teacher calls the role to determine who is truly present and who is truly absent, you and I must consciously refuse to sit down in the “the seat of scoffers.”  

Now, I’d like to ask you a question, and it’s about scoffing.   But, you see, I’m afraid that if I lay this question out there, you’ll scoff.   What is scoffing?   Scoffing is not simply the act of ridiculing or poking fun at someone’s expense.   Scoffing implies that we keep our distance.   That we use our words and our body language to deflect people before they come too close.   And, as you may know all too well, when we make ourselves vulnerable there’s nothing more painful than a colleague, a friend or a family member who sits back, folds his arms and scoffs.  

There’s an intriguing moment in the Jane Austin novel, Emma, when Miss Smith is standing all alone at an elaborate ballroom dance.   One of the hosts of the party encourages the town’s cleric to please take Miss Smith as a partner in the festivities.   Mr. Elton refuses to dance, although he had just made known how he would love to take part.   And by his stoic manner it’s clear that he scoffs at the very idea of coming so close to a person of inferior rank and social station.   So, within today’s scripture passage, what we have similarly is an invitation to dance.   Latah Valley—would you like to dance?   Would you do me the honor of joining hands and hearts and minds, of moving in the same rhythmic direction?   And you see, our response to this summons parallels the extent to which we “delight in the law of the Lord.”  As we mentioned in Galatians 5 last week, the law might be summarized in terms of love of neighbor.   Moreover, the verb that’s used in verse two, “to meditate day and night” comes from the same root as the word, “to plot.”   And that implies that rather than plotting out our days in terms of achieving a certain social status that we instead step into relationships where people are in danger of feeling as if they are rejected and alone.    

The truth of the matter is reconciliation.   That’s what God plants along the streams of water.  God plants agents of reconciliation.  Those who do not sit back and scoff are like “trees planted by streams of water…”    And yet, before we go any further, I’d like to distinguish between the tree that we hear from in the Disney version of Pocahontas as opposed to the tree that will “yield” the fruits of the Spirit of God which we discussed last week.     

“All around you are spirits,” says Grandma Willow to the young native girl, as she contemplates the incursion of European settlers.  

“They live in the earth, the water, the sky.  If you listen they will guide you.”  

Now, to be honest, that kind of philosophy is very attractive to me and to many others.   Disney knows how to push our proverbial buttons.   And, of course, who are we to argue that there are not “spirits all around…”?   Neither the Psalms, nor any other part of the Bible would necessarily dispute that.   However, what Psalm 1:3 does contend is that there is a depth of wisdom to be revealed by the Spirit of God, not just in creation, but in history and in community.   And it’s a depth of wisdom that can’t be utilized and that can’t be packaged and mass-produced and sold on Ebay to the highest bidder.    Wendell Berry has this great line about the limitations of the natural order of things.  He says,

“It is not allowable to love the Creation according to the purposes one has for it, any more than it is allowable to love one’s neighbor in order to borrow his tools”  (The Good Gift of Land, p. 273).

We can’t simply borrow the tools of the earth, the water, the sky because they help us get where we want to go.   We have to learn to love those things and those spirits simply because they exist, because God made them.  

In the documentary, Weapons of the Spirit, Pierre Sauvage returns to Le Chambon, France, where he had been raised as a child, during the Nazi occupation of World War Two.   The people of this small village, however, can also remember a time centuries earlier when the Roman Catholic Church had persecuted their Huguenot ancestors for rebelling against papal authority.   That background is important.  

Sauvage is a Jew, who with 5,000 other Jews escaped what German bureaucrats referred to as “the Final Solution,” a program that intended to incarcerate and exterminate an entire ethnic group.   Rather than facing life in a concentration camp, however, Sauvage spent the remainder of the war, being hidden, fed and cared for by Christian family who had a vicarious memory of suffering for their faith.   The matriarch of that clan had been a member of the Huguenot church in the village and she had listened to a sermon the pastor had preached on the so-called “weapons of the Spirit.”   Anyway, in this stunningly authentic moment, the film’s director breaks down in tears.  He hugs and holds onto the woman who had sheltered him, at the risk of her own life.   He hugs her and then has this say, “It was like hugging something solid, like a tree.  It was like hugging Absolute Goodness itself.”  

You see, the difference between Grandma Willow and that Huguenot woman in Le Chambon, France, couldn’t be more stark.   The personified tree in the Disney cartoon tells us that we get to decide what’s best for us and that the “spirits” of the earth, the water and the sky will guide us.   By contrast, the person hugged by Pierre Sauvage has been grown to be the way she is.   She has been grown to be this way by the Spirit of Christ.   And the fruit she bears betrays how blessed and how rooted she truly is.   Even the worst storms of human history cannot take her down…  And what about us?

Annie Dillard, it seems, is fascinated by mangrove trees.   She describes them as utterly durable and when their twisted roots and branches are cut loose from the shoreline, she marvels at the way a single tree will float, somehow mysteriously finding other detached trees in the turbulent surf.   And eventually a single mangrove, drifting and colliding in the ocean, has collected enough debris, enough muck of soil and sand, that it forms its own wondrous place and its own peculiar method for keeping time.   It “turns drift to dance” (Teaching A Stone To Talk, p. 152), writes Dillard, and that’s precisely what Psalm 1 recommends for us.

You may be here this morning, feeling as if the bits and pieces of your life are drifting further and further apart.   And, in this sea of despair, in this murky stream, it may seem that neither you, nor I have any alternative but to sit back and deflect the in-coming debris.   Don’t.   Don’t deflect it.   Let the bits and pieces of others bump into you.   And let the roots of the cross of Christ gather us together in one place and in one time.   And, by the Spirit of Christ, let’s become a destination of rest on the weary way.  

Amen.

Aside from its status as one of the four primary food groups, the very mention of the word, FRUIT, has inspired people for generations.  

That’s a poem by Bob Tucker that I offer as proof positive of FRUIT’S inspirational power.   FRUIT makes its mark in the world not only in terms of its nutritional value, but aesthetically, psychologically and spiritually.   In a Sunday School class, an old teacher taught the children memorize this verse:

Today I learned
Jesus is the Vine
With Him I grow
fruit very fine

Love and Joy and Peace
are three
of the fruits
Jesus wants from me

Patience, Kindness
Goodness too
These are the things
Jesus wants me to do

Faithfulness, Gentleness
Self-Control,
These are the fruits
Jesus wants me to grow 

And so, over the course of these summer months, time which may seem to pass so quickly, I’d like to recommend FRUIT.   FRUIT THAT RIPENS OVER TIME…

I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing; how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it&#