Sermons from Emmanuel: July 16, 2023

Sermons from Emmanuel Church, Dublin, New Hampshire
Sunday, July 16, 2023
Proper 10, Year A (RCL): The Very Rev. Gideon L. K. Pollach

So it sometimes happens that after I preach a sermon, someone will come to me and ask, where do you come up with this stuff? I even remember once, when I was in a job interview, the church that I was interviewing for asked me they said, what resources do you use for preaching?

So I had to be honest and say, Well, I use everything, you know, as inspiration for preaching. My life experience. Study of Scripture. People's incredible stories that they share with me. All the hardships of daily life. And of course, newspapers, films, books, articles, all all of the background noise of life inspires me and in some ways inspires my preaching.

So this week, I just want to say a special thank you to my intrepid Bible study participants who shared an hour with me on Wednesday, diving deeply into this amazing and very well known Parable of the Sower. So to David, Yank, Sharon, and all of us who were there, we had a very profitable this week. The insights that that group shared with me about their faithful impressions on this parable were inspiring.

Now, having said that, they might not recognize any of their inspiration in this sermon, but it's in here, I promise.

Another great source of inspiration to me and to many people, is the amazing beauty and the profound wisdom, of creation.

As Christians, we believe that everything we can see and even all that we can't see, all of it is created by God, for the mutual benefit and inspiration of all of creation, the whole world. The whole world is God's generous canvas. And, not just the world, but the universe, the stars, all of it is God's generous canvas. All of it points to the beauty, majesty, and generosity of God, the Creator.

This perspective is shared by people who call themselves Franciscans. People who, following in the path of St. Francis, and the Franciscan perspective, believe and preach that everything belongs and everything is sacred. And as true as that persepective is theologically, it's not always easy to appreciate.

I joke about this every time in the course of my work at St. John's in Cold Spring Harbor, I have to accomplish some sort of animal intervention on our campus, which is beautiful and large and includes a pond and woods. So there's a lot of wildlife.

I can't tell you how many times in the course of my work, I've had to remove a nuisance raccoon on Sunday mornings. Or perhaps encourage a persistent groundhog to stop undermining the foundations of the rectory. Or move an aggressive Swan from the church yard, who, in the course of protecting its young, is scaring my parishioners. Or, how frequently I have to stand at the doors of the church to warn folks coming through those doors to watch out for the osprey or red tailed hawk that is sitting on the top of our steeple on the arms of the cross, enjoying a delicious, but messy meal of fish or squirrel and occasionally dropping tidbits of its meal right in front of the doors of the church, but, thankfully, not yet on to the heads of our parishioners.

It's not constant. But it's pretty frequent.

I'm not even going to mention the scourge of goose poop on every flat surface.

So, sometimes it's just hard with all that to remember that everything belongs. Or, that even the snapping turtles are sacred.

But, I am continually reminded that nature has a way of outsmarting us. Especially us humans.

So, it was with great appreciation that I read an article this week from the New York Times about Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a dutch eurasian magpie researcher who discovered something particularly profound. The New York times reported that: Florian-Hiemstra “was not prepared for what he found when he went to investigate a strange nest that had been spotted outside a hospital in Antwerp, Belgium, in July 2021. Nestled near the top of a sugar maple tree was a Eurasian magpie nest that resembled a cyberpunk porcupine, with thin metal rods sticking out in every direction.”

“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he recalled. “These are birds making a nest with anti-bird spikes.” Now, this was a novel surprise - he was used to odd objects making their way into nests. He already kept a list that included: windshield wipers, sunglasses, plastic carnations, and every other variety of trash making its way into nests - even envelopes used to package cocaine. But this was a novel observation: “outside the Antwerp hospital — where, as it happened, many of the rooftop spikes had gone missing — the magpies had managed to convert hostile architecture into a home.

"They’re outsmarting us,” Mr. Hiemstra said. “We’re trying to get rid of birds, and the birds are collecting our metal spikes and actually making more birds in these nests. I think it’s just a brilliant comeback.” This nest contained over 1,500 anti-bird spikes, that ended up protecting the birds from removal, rather than protecting the hospital from the birds. (Anthes, Emily. “‘They’re Outsmarting Us’: Birds Build Nests from Anti-Bird Spikes.” The New York Times, 13 July 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/07/13/science/magpies-birds-nests.html. )

Now that kind of creative reuse that kind of amazing resilience is admirable. In fact, it's almost mystical and reminds me that everything all of creation is seeking to thrive in this universe of God's generosity. And that you and I are not the only wise animals trying to make sense and a home and what can sometimes be a hostile environment.

Magpies, groundhogs, hawks, squirrels, turtles, foxes, Gosling's cygnets none of these are doing anything really wrong. They're just fighting to thrive within the constraints of an environment that sometimes hostile to them.

Take, for example, this incredible reading from the book of Genesis about Jacob and Esau. It is a paradigmatic story from the Book of Genesis that tells us more about human nature than divine generosity.

When I used to teach biblical theoloigy - a brief 18-semester interlude in my life - I would often use this passage to raise questions about the human tendency toward exclusivity and divine generosity. As the story goes, Rebekah, Isaac’s beloved wife, is found to be pregnant with twins, and not just any twins - twins, who, are aware from the moment of conception that only one of them will be born first. Jacob and Esau spend nine months boxing in the womb to be first and, by extension, to receive the benefit God’s blessing.

Even in birth, Jacob is fighting to get out first - trying pull his brother Esau back into the womb after delivery by the heel.

It's not clear that their parents were able to manage this sibling conflict and rivalry well. We hear today of how Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright for a bowl of lentil stew. In another chapter, Rebekah will help Jacob steal his brother’s inheritance also by putting on a sheeps carcass as a coat so he is hairy like his brother, lowering his voice, and tricking his blind father into giving him God’s blessing.

Its not a pretty story. But, it definitely raises some important questions about the exclusivity of God’s blessing. Why is it, my students and I would sometimes ask, that God could not bless both boys? Was it not possible for them to share God’s abundant and generous blessing? Truth is, I don’t know. But I suspect that they could.

All throughout scripture and human life, we experience this constant theme of exclusivity and generosity. Is Abraham’s the only family in the world to enjoy God’s blessing?

Abraham has two sons - Isaac and Ishmael - and yet only Isaac enjoys Abrahams's affection and blessing - Ishmael and his mother Hagar are sent out by Abrham to live or die in the wilderness. And yet, in the end, God provides for both Isaac and Ishmael. Jacob and Esau believe that only one can enjoy the blessings of God, so their life is a constant struggle against each other.

Truth be told, the tendency towards exclusivity runs throughout the scriptures - to call one race chosen is to suggest that all the others are not. Israelites refuse to share the holy land with their neighbors the Ammonites, Hivvites, Perizzites, Edomites, and Jebusites. Even Jesus’s generosity to those normally excluded from polite society is the cause of great offense in his time and place.

This question: “Is it God’s habit to privilege one group over another?” was a constant concern of my students. And, to be honest, me as well. It just doesn’t feel right.

This tendency towards exclusivity just doesn't feel like the God that I see revealed in Jesus, or in creation. It feels more like something we, human beings, have done. It feels like a human perspective on creation, on blessing, and on God.

What if, even after all this time - we still don’t understand that God’s glorious provision, God’s abundant generosity is available to all and is for all? What if the wisdom of St. Francis that everything belongs, is a truth still absent from our all too human hearts?

Richard Rohr, the beautiful Franciscan mystical writer, wrote this week: ‘Francis of Assisi, like Jesus, refused to exclude things from the garden of grace; there is no exclusionary instinct in either of them (God or Jesus)—except toward exclusion itself!” Another theologian, Elizabeth Rankow, added, “Oneness is an easy thing to profess until we realize that it must include not only the people we like and agree with, not only those to whom we are sympathetic, but also those whom we view as abhorrent. We don’t get to choose who we are one with—it’s everybody.” (Received by Gideon Pollach, Richard Rohr Daily Meditation: Everything Belongs: Weekly Summary, 15 July 2023. )

I would add - it's not just everybody, its every thing - all of creation. Even the Dalai Lama admitted that the the one thing that continually challenged him to be fully aware of the oneness of all creation were mosquitos.

The great mystical challenge is to grow in our appreciation that we are deeply connected to God- with all of creation - not at the expense of all of creation. Everything and everyone are part of God’s generous economy of grace.

Now, in this context, let's revisit the great parable of the sower - one of the best-known parables of the kingdom of God.

This parable has a long history of moralistic interpretation.

We cannot help but compare the way different soils in the parable prove hospitable to the sower. Some grow. Some don’t. Some are rocky, or shallow, or ill-prepared for growth. Preachers often compare the health of the soil and the health of human souls - are we ready to receive the word and make a hospitable home for it? Or are you we shallow, or too distracted by the cares of the world to accept the grace of God? Are our souls inhospitable to God’s grace because of our own moral failings?

This is an easy interpretation - except that it privileges the soil over the sower. It centers the interpretation on the quality of the soil, rather than the generosity oif the sower. But, this is not the parable of the soil, it is the parable of the sower. The sower is the central feature of this story- a sower who is content to scatter seeds regardless of the health of the soil.

If the sower has any knowledge of how things grow, she or he must be aware that seeds only thrive in soil that is prepared and hospitable - any gardener - even I -know that.

But, this sower sows seeds everywhere, making no distinction between good soil and poor soil. The sower doesn't try to amend the soil, or change it. The sower doesn’t avoid the shallow soil - he sows wildly. The parable, the way we receive it today - makes no moral distinction between weeds, thorns, and wheat. Even the inhospitable shows signs of growth and feeds the birds. It just isn't as abundant as the good soil.

Perhaps this is the truth of the parable - God is wildly generous. Grace, favor, love, blessing, the fruits of God’s presence - whatever is on offer from God - is available to everything and everyone.

Everything belongs. Everything is good. Even you, and even me.

Perhaps, It does not matter what we have done, or the mistakes we have made, or the ways in which we have lived - you, me, the sinner sitting next to you, the family member you disagree with, the mosquito on your arm, the weeds in your garden, the fox in your henhouse, the osprey on your roof, the groundhog in your basement - all of it belongs. All of it reveals God’s love. All of it enjoys God’s blessing.

And that includes you. No matter what you have done, or left undone, no matter who you love or hate, no matter when you have met Jesus, or if you are an episcopalian or, God forbid, a Presbyterian - all of us belong. God loves every thing. God loves everyone. No exceptions. No exclusion. Without reservation.

We just haven’t learned it yet.

Amen