For centuries, for millennia, people have been looking at nature, looking at the creation and being inspired by it. Many people have described the feeling that in seeing something of the creation they are seeing something of the creator. In seeing the creation and understanding how it works they are seeing how God works. The early scientists all understood themselves as doing holy work, of trying to understand the creator better by understanding the creation better. It’s an ancient concept. We go back to the book of Amos that has the beautiful line “seek the one who made the Pleiades and Orion.” The constellations are remarkable, the stars are remarkable and behind that creation is a creator who made them. We have been looking to the heavens, we have been looking to creation in order to see the creator. That is good, and that is holy work.
The Parable as an Icon
As I hear the parable of the sower, I think about God’s love and how abundant God’s love is, that God is willing to waste it. God is so utterly inefficient. God would not get through Business School because God is willing to waste seeds, is willing to waste love on paths and on rocks and on thorny places, even though it is not necessarily going to take root and thrive.
The Holiness of Rest
How are you holding up right now? My usual question is, how are you, but that seems like such an inappropriate question right now. Stressed? Yes. Is it hard? Is it challenging? Difficult? Saying how are you holding up seems to acknowledge that I know this is difficult, I know this is stressful. But, within that context, how are you holding up under the weight of the burdens of this time?
Welcoming the Christ in Others
Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” In the Gospel today Jesus is getting at an idea he is going to flesh out further later in the Gospel. It is the idea that in other people we can find Christ. In this section it is all about welcoming Christ in the stranger, and that in the act of hospitality you are welcoming Christ. Later on, in Matthew 25, he expands that even more: I was hungry and you gave me food; thirsty and you gave me something to drink; I was naked and you clothed me; I was in prison and you visited me; I was injured and you bound me up; I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
Sin
Sin. We don’t like to talk about it very much. And I get that. I don’t like to talk about it very much. It makes me uncomfortable. Sometimes feelings of guilt and shame might start rising within us as we think about what it is we have done wrong. We might get defensive. It just seems easier to avoid even thinking about our sin than dealing with it. Additionally, we have a history of misnaming sin, of calling things sin that aren’t, and not calling things sin that are. And sometimes in that misnaming we have weaponized sin language to use it against people, abusively, hurtfully. Dare I say, sinfully. So it is easier not to talk about it.
Extraordinary Ordinary Time
We are now in the 2nd half of the church year, which is commonly called Ordinary Time. The 1st half of the year is shaped by Jesus’s life. It is marked by a series of fasts and feasts that commemorate the moments in Jesus’s life, from his birth to his death and resurrection and ascension. The 2nd half of the year is different. It is not shaped by Jesus’s life, it is not marked by fasts or feasts. Now there are feasts that happen along the way, but they are different. In the 1st half of the year the feasts are the point. We move from feast to feast to feast to fast to feast. The whole time is marked by those things. But in Ordinary Time the feasts happen on the side. They are incidental. They don’t really affect what we are doing in this time.
