Sowing the Seeds

Here is my sermon from last Sunday:

In August when I preached on Jeremiah for the first time and banged the theme of repentence over our head for twenty minutes, I promised that we wouldn’t be hearing from Jeremiah again any time too soon, but yet here we are. Pastor Joel preached on Jeremiah last week and I continue it this week. But the Jeremiah passages we heard last week and this week form a different picture of Jeremiah’s message.

In Jeremiah’s call story in the first chapter, we are told that Jeremiah is being appointed by God “over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow…” That was what we heard in those earlier passages. Jeremiah is giving God’s judgment against the southern kingdom and announcing the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and the exile of the people.

In addition to being told what was going to happen to them , the people were also told that they were responsible for what was going to happen because they had failed to follow God’s commands. They had broken their covenant relationship with God. These are not exactly the most uplifting words we hear in scripture, and is one of the reasons why Jeremiah is called the weeping or the crying prophet, because he weeps over the sins of the people and cries over the coming destruction. All he seemed to offer was a story of doom and gloom, and the people were witnessing the prohesied destruction. Everything that they held as important and sacred was gone, and they had no idea what the future was going to bring, or even if they had a future

But then starting at chapter 30, we get a change not only in Jeremiah’s prophecies but also in his tone. Jeremiah begins to offer notes of comfort, and so these chapters are called the Book of Consolation, and in pronouncing these things he begins to fulfill the second portion of his call story. As I already said, God told Jeremiah that he was being called “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow,” but he was also being called “to build and to plant.” Today’s scripture passage follows up on the passage from last week in which the exiles are told to put down roots, to buy property, to get married and have families, to do all those things that return a sense of normalcy to life. He begins to offer a new sense of hope. Even though the reality of the situation hasn’t really changed, what jeremiah provides is a new lense through which to view the future.

Nine years ago, these readings fell five and six weeks respectively after 9/11, and I can remember many preachers at the time using these passages to talk about the future. Our understanding of the world and of ourselves had just been shattered, and here was Jeremiah talking about hope in the midst of despair and destruction. That is also what was going on for the Jewish people. But we also find ourselves sitting here today two years removed from the biggest economic meltdown that most of us have ever experienced, and even now while some people are doing better, most people have not yet felt any sense of easy or of recovery and are wondering what does the future hold for us? Is there any hope? What word of consolation can we receive?

Jeremiah says that in the midst of despair God is going to sow new seeds, new seeds of life, new seeds of forgiveness and a new covenant written on our hearts. God, who created the earth and sowed the garden originally, is going to do something new here as well. God is going to form a new covenant with the people. While covenants take a prominent role in the Bible, only once in the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures is the phrase ‘new covenant” used, and that is right here. But this time rather than a covenant created in stone as was given to Moses or marked on the outside of the body as given to Abraham through circumcision, this time the covenant is going to be made in the heart. We are being given a new covenant. This is not an external set of laws to be obeyed for fear of punishment, but instead this is a covenant that we live into because it is a part of who we are. It is an embodied covenant where people’s hearts will be so filled with the love of God that every step of their lives will be guided and led by God, and they will be unable to do anything differently.

When we refer to John Wesley’s claim that we are moving on to perfection, this is what we are talking about. This is being sanctified in God’s grace, and what Jeremiah tells us is that there is nothing radical that needs to be done to have this accomplished, instead the law that is written on our hearts are these words: “I am yours, and you are mine, says the lord.” All we have to do to make the covenant is to say “we will be God’s people.”

According Anthony Saldarini, this new covenant does three things. The first is that first it “removes a despairing attitude from the mind of the community.” It gives us the hope for a new future even in the midst of our despair. Second, it “contributes to the picture of a renewal of community life by God’s power,” because we stop relying only on ourselves and turn ourselves over to God. And finally, it “incorporates into this vision of newness a realistic note that knows the reality of sin in the human condition but believes it will be checked and controlled, not pervasive and determinative in the new community.” That is we recognize our flaws and failures, and those as a collective body, but we say that these things will not hold us back or limit us because we are God’s people.

Now Christians have typically interpreted this promise as only being fulfilled in the person of Christ. But, Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans, that we are grafted onto the tree that already existed. Christians, Paul says, “come derivatively and belatedly to share the promised newness.” We enter into the covenant through the person of Christ, but the promise of the covenant is already there because we have been grafted onto the tree that God has already created. Now I’m sure that some of you think we are cherry picking these scriptures so that they fit the theme of the stewardship campaign, but it’s not true. It’s just the way it’s worked out, but how does this have anything to do with giving? Well I’m glad you asked, because really this is about one more piece of the covenant.

In the Methodist church we pledge to support the church with our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service and our witness. All of those things are important, but obviously at the moment we are focusing on our gifts. So here’s a little illustration about giving. Here we have our tree that is our faith and this congregation. We have been talking for several weeks now about strengthening our roots and growing our branches. But what do trees need to grow? They need light and air, which means they need to be out in the world. They cannot be boxed in or constrained. They need food of some sort, which means they need to be exposed to things which feed them and renew them. And they need water. All of these things are important, and without one of them the tree will die, but water is one of the most important.

Now there’s several things we can do with this tree. The first thing we can do is to say “I’m not going to water it. God will give it whatever it might need.” But that only goes so far as we have seen this summer. It also matches a famous statement about how things get done in the world. It says, without God, we can’t, and without us God won’t. If we refuse to water the tree then God won’t water it either. Have you ever seen what a tree that is lacking water will do. The first thing is to stop sending water out to the farthest branches and leaves. It begins to turn inwards and reduce its size, it drops leaves and focuses only on these things that it thinks it absolutely needs to feed in order to survive. I’m sure we’ve all seen or heard about churches like this. But, here’s the problem, when churches go into survival mode they stop being a church because when a church is concerned only about its own survival it is no longer focused on making disciples of Christ, it is only focused on itself.

Now another thing we can do is to give it only the amount of water we are willing to give. Now this glass represents the material blessings that have been bestowed on us. To make this a little more colorful let’s make the water green. Since we’re talking about money that works, but it also makes it a little easier to see. Most of us work from a position of scarcity. We say this is all I have and I need to be very careful with what I do with my money, while also still having some fun with it. And so we start and we pay for housing, utilities and our food, then we pay for our car, and maybe we have to pay for school. And then there’s clothing, and our vacations, and retirement, and our credit cards, and hopefully we’re putting some away for retirement, and then we need a little spending money for movies, eating out and other forms of entertainment, and then at the end we say to God, “Thank you for all your blessings, this is what I’m going to present to you,” and so we put this in the plate, and say “ahh ahh” and we present it to God.

But that’s not a lot left to strengthen the roots of the tree, even with a lot of people doing the same thing, in some cases quantity does not make for quality. I’m sure that we’ve all seen trees that are not getting as much water as they need. When they are lacking their roots go out searching for more water and the root systems become very shallow. Think of all the sidewalks you’ve seen broken up by roots that are too shallow. By having shallow roots, trees can try and get more water. We’ve all seen tree do this. But this is only a short-term solution because what is the risk with a shallow root system? In any strong wind, these are the trees that fall over because their roots are not strong enough to hold them in place. In other words, when their faith is challenged, when they deal with one of the very situations that Jeremiah is talking about, a time of despair, then they fall apart. But a healthy tree, on the other hand, has a healthy root system that are not only spreads out but that also goes deep in order to provide stability to the tree.

So let’s try that again. This again is the same amount, but rather than giving to God from what remains we give from our first fruits, and look at how much still remains. The scriptures tell us that we should be giving from our first fruits or from our treasures, and that is what this does. It does not change the reality. We still have the same amount of money but what has changed is how we perceive. When we give from bounty we have changed our reality, because then rather than giving as a burden, or a yoke which we wear around our necks, we instead give freely and we give from abundance. How much better will the tree do with this gift?

Now we know that there are some in this congregation who are still struggling financially, and we ask you to give what you can, and we ask that those who are doing better to help us all carry one another burdens because this is our tree and it lives and dies not with the work of just one of us but from the collective effort we put into strengthening our roots and spreading our branches. To close I’d like to tell you a couple of stories.

Last week I was worshipping with our brothers and sisters in Leawood, Kansas, at the church of the Resurrection. I was there having spent two and half days at leadership training along with 2000 other clergy and laity from 46 states. There were also 11 ministers from Brazil who flew up to attend. Their airfare to get there was more than 1,000, and as you might imagine, clergy salaries are not the same in brazil as they are in the United States, so this was a significant commitment on their part. At the end of the last session they asked for some time with Adam Hamilton, who is the senior pastor, to thank him for the church’s hospitality, where they presented him with an envelope.

Inside was a card expressing their thanks, but there was also an offering they had taken. The Church of the Resurrection has a program called Matthew’s Ministry which works with people with special needs, and these clergy members were so moved by what they were doing with this group of God’s children that they had collected $240 dollars between them to give to this program. Some of the money was American dollars, but some was also in Brazilian Reals. I’m assuming that those who gave in reals had run out of their American money but still felt the need to give, and so gave from what they had.

In addition to Matthew’s ministry, they also hold a worship service once each month for Alzheimer’s patients from the area nursing homes. Most of those who attend have advanced Alzheimer’s, and while they can’t remember their names they can still sing all of the songs. After one of the services, one of the ladies in attendance walked up to one of the ushers and handed him an offering envelope before she was escorted back to their van. The woman had tried to write her name on the outside of the envelope, if we had video capabilities I would show you an image of it, but all she could do was just make some strait lines with a pencil, but it was what was inside that took everyone aback. Inside was a packet of cookies that she had received at the nursing home. They don’t take an offering at this service, but she knew that she was supposed to be giving to God from her treasure and so she gave probably the only thing she had to give, her packet of cookies.

Can we say that we match those stories? Are we giving to God as a burden, or are we giving freely? Are we giving because we have to, or are we giving because we are saying to God, “I want you to write your covenant on my heart, because you are my God and I am you disciple.”

I have one last thing. This week we received an email from Ginger Merritt. The Merritts are members of this church who moved to Shanghai a little more than two years ago. This is what Ginger had to say:

We are enjoying life in China and especially the nice weather lately. It is very pleasant here and the sky is clear blue. October and November are typically the best months in Shanghai. We have just returned from a short trip to Jeju Island in South Korea. It was very relaxing and nice landscape. We did nothing particular except spend time as a family. Abby is off this week on her school trip to Xian to explore the historical sites and museums. Emma returned from her school trip to Beijing 2 weeks ago. They camped on the Great Wall and visited the Summer Palace and Forbidden City. Although she complained about all of the hiking and walking, she had a great time and came back very animated and refreshed. We are so happy that they get to experience these things.

On a very important note, we have found a church that we LOVE! After almost two years, we came across a Methodist church started about 1.5 years ago by a group of 12 Americans from the Midwest. They met privately for the first 8 months (due to strict regulations on Christian churches in China), and then grew to about 50 regular people, so decided to officially form a church. We discovered it and immediately felt “whole” again. I will help with the Youth group beginning next month and both girls are enthusiastic about church again. We have been going to a non-denominational church for the past year, and really like the pastor, but it is very contemporary and not so comfortable for us. But, we went anyway, in the absence of something that was more of a fit for our family. Now, we have Trinity. It is funny that we, as Americans, with so many choices, do not realize the hole that is there when you cannot find a comfortable church home.

Please give my love and regards to our SUMC friends. We miss you!

In Him,
Ginger

What we all have to ask during this stewardship campaign is what does this church mean to us, and will our giving continue to allow it to run the programs that it does that allow us to make a difference in the world? If this church was to disappear what would that mean for our lives? What would it mean for our community? What would it mean for our nation and our world? Would anyone notice? I think they would, be the only way we can strengthen our roots and spread our branches is through your support.

It is my hope that over the next week you will sit down with your family and talk about what this church means to you and how you will support it with your gifts in the next year, and you will also have a conversation with God about your giving and what it means for your spiritual life. We cannot do what we do in this church without your support, so I hope you will be ready next week to present your estimate of giving so that together we can strengthen our roots and spread our branches together, not only next year but in the years to come. May it be so. Amen.