Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

What do you see when you look at the world today?
Are you able to see beyond all the weeds, all the evil?
What do you see when you look at your own heart?
Are you overwhelmed by all the anger and judgement and sin within it?

What we see matters.

This parable and my friend, Bishop Regina Hassanally, have been helping me to see differently this week. Regina shared with me what has come for her as she prays with our parable today.

She says, “I picture, in my mind’s eye the field Jesus describes. I picture myself in the middle of this field – with all kinds of greenery growing up around me – an imperceptible difference between the wheat and the weeds and a strange comfort in the knowledge that both are there.”

She writes, “I am calmed and steadied by the truth that there are both wheat and weeds among us and – in this parable – both are allowed to grow. This truth reminds me that though there are discouraging realities: poor leadership, systemic injustice … things that can seem too overwhelming to overcome, the gospel truth is that the wheat – the work of God – is not hindered or overcome by the weeds. In the end there is a harvest of both.”

The weeds are there, yes, but so is the wheat – the work of God. And the wheat is not hindered or overcome by the weeds.

This summer, Americans have been taking a hard look at really pervasive evil weeds within and around us – the evils of racial injustice and structural inequality. We need to do this work. Racism is not what God intends. It is the work of evil, not the work of God. We need to acknowledge the evil within us and in our society. Please stay with this work. Read, listen, learn, examine the racism within and around you and take action for racial justice. Work to be anti-racist.

Yet as we do this work, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the weeds and the evil. So, Jesus calls us to fix our attention on the wheat, on the growth that God is bringing in the world. What we see matters.

Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey talks about how he learned to see differently. I’ve shared this story before, recently even during a Wednesday night worship service, but it continues to speak to me, so I want to share it with more of you today. Just after graduating from law school, Cory Booker moved into a low-income housing area in New Jersey because he wanted to make a difference in a disadvantaged community. He sought out Ms. Virginia, the building president, to say, “Mam, I’m here to help.” Ms. Virginia looked skeptical. He made sure to tell her he was a graduate of Stanford and Yale Law School, mentioned that a few times actually. She didn’t seem overjoyed by his presence, so he just kept talking.

Finally, she interrupted him and said, “Follow me”. She led him down to the street and said, “Tell me what you see.” Booker described the crack houses, the crime, the things that had been stolen from his car the night he moved in – all the problems, all the weeds. The more he talked, the more disappointed she looked. Finally, she shook her head, “You can’t help me”, and she walked away.

Booker ran and caught up with her, “What do you mean, what are you talking about?” he asked.

Ms. Virginia turned and said, “Boy, you need to understand something. The world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside you. If you’re one of those people who only sees darkness and despair and problems, that’s all there’s gonna to be; but if you are one of those stubborn people who every time you open your eyes you see beauty, you see love, you see possibilities, you see the face of God, then you can be one of those people who helps me.”^[1]

What we see matters. Jesus must so often look at us the same way Ms. Virginia looked at Cory Booker – grieved at inability to see the good.

Jesus must so often want to take us out on the streets of our country and ask us, “Tell me, what do you see?” If Jesus asked us this, I think we’d tell him about all the racism, all the problems, all the weeds. I imagine we might place special emphasis on the difficult people who just don’t get it, who need to be corrected. “They are so angry, so judgmental, so extreme.” “They are evil, they are the problem, if only we could root them out.”

And then I think Jesus would say something like, “The world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you.” Jesus sees all of the weeds inside each of us and it grieves him. But that isn’t all he sees. Jesus also sees so much wheat, so much that can nurture others, so much of God in each and every one of us, in you. Jesus sees you for who you truly are: beloved, precious child of God and beautiful to behold. Jesus gazes upon you with love.

Being regarded in this way, with love, can change how we see the world. It can help us to focus on the wheat rather than being overwhelmed by the weeds. The loving gaze of Jesus also helps us to grow and produce good fruit – it can change the field of our hearts. With the love and forgiveness and presence of Christ Jesus with us, then the wheat, the good fruit, the work of God, can flourish within us.

As Bishop Hassanally puts it, “Jesus calls us to continue to grow – in spite of the weeds around us – to continue to grow on up in the field in which we have been planted …” And, in our following after Jesus we are taught to cultivate the fruit of the Spirit: loving kindness, peace, patience, gentleness and self-control. Through the work of the Spirit we grow in faith – the work of God undeterred by the weeds around us.

Beloved of God, today and each day, Jesus gazes upon you with love, with mercy, with forgiveness.

With this gaze, you can bear good fruit.
You can shine like the sun.

^[1] Story shared by Senator Booker at the 2019 Festival of Homiletics “Preaching and Politics” in Washington, DC, May 2019.

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

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Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

Did you catch all the joy in the scripture readings today? These texts are overflowing with just extravagant rejoicing. There is abundant joy busting out all over the place.

The prophet Isaiah proclaims to the people living in exile, “You shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”

The Psalmist praises God saying, “You make the dawn and the dusk to sing for joy. May the meadows cover themselves with flocks, and the valleys cloak themselves with grain; let them shout for joy and sing.” 

Paul proclaims good news of great joy to the Romans, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” 

And Jesus tells a vast crowd a parable about a sower who goes out to sow. This sower flings seeds everywhere with joyful abandon, and they bring forth an incredibly bountiful harvest.

All this exultation may seem a little disconnected from the challenges we are facing today. How can we rejoice as the pandemic surges, as loud, angry voices rage, as people prioritize their own comfort over the common good, as racial injustice persists? Extravagant joy and delight feel out of reach and a little inappropriate, maybe. We’ve got some big issues to address after all. Our Gospel reading today does paint a vivid picture of our human challenges. We’ve got a lot of hard, thorny, and rocky soil within us. The conditions are not so good for growth and change.

Evil and sin eat away at the truth and it doesn’t flourish in our lives. We hear a summons to justice and receive it eagerly, but it doesn’t really take root. As soon as something hard is asked of us, we turn away. We want to do what is right, but the cares and lures of this world are persistent thorns that block our growth.

The landscape is pretty bleak. When you look closely at the human condition, there’s not a lot of cause for rejoicing. There’s much that can lead to despair, judgement and anger – at ourselves and others. So, we better get to work digging and fertilizing and tending the soil to try to improve ourselves and others, right? We should attack those thorns and clear out those rocks and not be afraid to get our hands dirty. Maybe, but as anyone who’s spent time gardening or farming knows, soil can’t make itself into good soil. It can’t weed out the thorns or clear away the rocks within itself. Soil can’t just pick up and move to a less trodden path.

The good news is that this parable isn’t instructing us about how to be better soil. It isn’t telling us how we should improve the landscape around us. This parable is about Jesus, an extravagantly generous sower who scatters seed with abandon. This sower flings the seed of God’s word everywhere – the word of justice and mercy, challenge, forgiveness and love, the word that changes lives and brings new life.

This sower doesn’t storm around angrily declaring, “You better clean up your act if you want any hope of change.” He doesn’t shake his head muttering, “Can you believe this thorny, rocky, shallow soil?” The sower doesn’t even do a careful analysis of the soil to determine where the seed has the best chance at growth. Common sense would say you shouldn’t sow seed on the path, or the rocky or thorny ground.  You should conserve and be frugal and sow just enough seed only on the good soil. 

This sower approaches the human landscape very differently. He goes out walking, sowing seeds everywhere. Author Debie Thomas has helped me to picture this extravagant sower, Jesus.^[1] She writes, “Imagine it — a sower blissfully walking across the fields and meadows, the back alleys and sidewalks, the playgrounds and parking lots of this world, fistfuls of seed in his quick-to-open hands. There is no way to contain that much seed. No way to sort or save it. Of course, it will spill over. Of course, it will fall through his fingers and cover the ground. Of course, it will scatter in every direction. How can it not?”

The good news is that this marvelous seed, the seed of God’s word, does work change. People are changed, we are changed, when we hear of God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s justice, God’s welcome.

This good news of great joy matters in the world. “God’s Word will go out from God’s mouth and accomplish what God purposes for it, no matter where it lands … God has an endless ability to soften hard ground, clear away rocks, and cut through the most stubborn of thorns to make way for a harvest.”^[2] God is at work in the soil of your life, in the soil of our world to bring growth.

With such an extravagant sower flinging this good news everywhere, we can let go of our own despair at the human condition. We can instead practice abundance and joy. Debie Thomas writes,

“How I wish that the Church was known for its absurd generosity. How I wish we were famous for being like the Sower, going out in joy, scattering seed before and behind us in the widest arcs our arms can make …. How I wish the people in our lives could see a quiet, gentle confidence in us when we tend to the hard, rocky, thorny places in our communities, instead of finding us abrasive, judgmental, exacting, and insular. How I wish seeds of love, mercy, justice, humility, honor, and truthfulness would fall through our fingers in such appalling quantities that even the birds, the rocks, the thorns, and the shallow, sun-scorched corners of the world would burst into colorful, riotous, joyous life.”^[3]

Beloved of God, we do have hard work to do in this world. Yet, we also have an extravagant sower who scatters love and forgiveness, joy and abundance freely and fully into our lives, into your life. When you consider the landscape and are tempted to despair, fix your eyes on the sower and rejoice. Open your hands, lift up your heads and bask in this joyful abundance. Let it flow through you to this world God so loves.

^[1] The Extravagant Sower by Debie Thomas posted on JourneywithJesus. net https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=2687

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Ibid.

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

There is a lot going on in this passage, but I want to invite you to again hear Jesus’ words near the end of the passage and imagine Jesus speaking them directly to you. Jesus says to you today: Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Beloved of God, I know you are weary and burdened today. Jesus knows you are weary and burdened. Jesus gives you rest. Receive this rest and this care today.

Please don’t diminish your own weariness, your own burdens by saying, “I know others have it so much worse.” Don’t fall into the trap of comparative suffering. Emotions researcher Brene Brown describes how comparative suffering happens. She writes, “Fear and scarcity immediately trigger comparison, and even pain and hurt are not immune to being assessed and ranked.” In this time when fear and scarcity are rampant, we are so often engaging in this comparative suffering, saying things like, “I shouldn’t complain about the family reunion being cancelled because others have lost family members.” “I’m overwhelmed by the challenges of my job during a pandemic, but it could be so much worse – I could be unemployed.” “The pain of black Americans is so great so why am I complaining?”

Brene Brown points out that comparative suffering comes from the belief that empathy is finite, the idea that If you practice empathy and kindness with yourself, you will have less to give for the people who really need it.

But empathy doesn’t work that way. When we practice empathy for ourselves and others, we create more empathy. The ER doctor in Texas doesn’t benefit more if you conserve your kindness only for her and withhold it from yourself or from your neighbor who is lonely. The family of George Floyd doesn’t benefit more if you just ignore your own pain right now. Certainly, we do need to practice perspective as we consider our own struggles and the pain of the world. We do need to be aware of our own privilege and work to dismantle it. Yet, when we acknowledge our own pain, it can help open us to the pain of others.

I saw this at work last Sunday when we had a Zoom Adult Forum on White Privilege in the ELCA. Our facilitator, Jon Ailabouni, read a list of the privileges that most European Americans experience in the ELCA and people of color do not. These include things like: “When I enter the church office, I am not given directions to the food shelf unless I ask for them;” “When I read Scripture in church, no one congratulates me on being “so articulate.” Jon asked us to listen to the 26 statements and discern for ourselves, ‘yes’ or ‘no’, if we felt we had these privileges. Some of the women and LGBTQ people in the group had higher levels of ‘no’ answers. For instance, as a clergy woman, as I reflect on my experience in the larger church, I said ‘no’ to 5 statements, including: “It is not likely that people will talk over me when I am trying to share;” and “People are rarely surprised by the fact that I am employed or by my choice of career.”

I was struck that those who had said ‘no’ to some statements had a deep empathy for how difficult it is to feel welcome as a person of the color in most ELCA congregations. An awareness of their struggle with feeling excluded helped to open them to the pain of others, it made them want to be even more welcoming to others.

So please dear ones, don’t feel you need to ration empathy and love, practice it for yourself and for others. Empathy is not finite. It grows as we receive it and offer it.

Today hear and receive Jesus’ words to you, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Notice, too, that the rest Jesus gives us isn’t escape from the world. Jesus says we are to take his yoke upon ourselves and learn from him. We are to take up his work of loving God and loving others and loving this hurting world wholeheartedly – with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. We are to join Jesus’ work of healing and redeeming the world. Jesus says that this yoke is easy and that this burden is light. Sometimes I want to say really Jesus? It doesn’t always feel that way.

Loving others, loving this world wholeheartedly, feels really hard some days, most days right now, actually. It feels heavy and wearisome to try to be responsible and community-minded during this pandemic, especially when so many are choosing not to act the same. It feels heavy and wearisome to try to address white privilege when so many won’t even acknowledge it exists within our congregation, community and country.

Yet, when Jesus calls us to take up his yoke, he is saying we don’t have to do this work of loving the world alone. He is reminding us that we are yoked with him the way one ox is yoked with another so they can pull in tandem. We don’t have to do the work of loving the world on our own. Instead, we are joined to this work with Jesus.

And as my friend Stacey Nalean-Carlson puts it, “Yoked with Christ—united with him in baptism—there is no burden we carry that isn’t shared by him. The full weight is never ours to bear alone.” She also points out that, “We also learn from the one whose yoke we wear.  Jesus is gentle and humble in heart. The Greek word translated here as ’humble’ describes one who depends on the Lord rather than self, one who is God-reliant rather than self-reliant.* We learn from Jesus how to entrust all our burdens to God. On the cross, as Jesus bore the full weight of loving this world to the end, he cried out to God, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). Jesus lived and died – loved and lost, wept and rejoiced – relying on God’s love for him and for the world.” Yoked with him we learn how to do this. He shares our burdens as we do this.

And as Pr. Stacey says so beautifully, “When I picture being yoked with Jesus, I actually imagine an endless yoke circling around the world, all God’s people united by Christ – the church on earth and the church in heaven – carrying that burden of love for the world together.”

Beloved of God, you who are weary and heavy laden, Jesus gives you rest.
You are yoked with Christ Jesus and with all God’s people.
There is no burden you carry that is not shared.
Receive Christ’s love and compassion for you today.

Remember you are joined with Christ Jesus and Christ’s church as you share that compassion with the world.

___________________________________________________

Sources

Brene Brown: https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-on-comparative-suffering-the-50-50-myth-and-settling-the-ball/

Greek translation: https://biblehub.com/greek/5011.htm

Pastor Stacey Nalean-Carlson: http://staceynaleancarlson.com/2019/12/22/light-advent-day-22/