Readings: Genesis 25:19-34 Psalm 119:105-112 Romans 8:1-11 Matthew 13:1-9,18-23
Sentence: ‘If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.’ Romans 8:11
Tena koutou katoa e te whanau o Te Wairua Tapu.
What a big week it has been whanau. I know there so much uncertainty still effecting our daily lives and for some of you, life will be getting tougher, if it isn’t already, and I’m sure there are many more challenges that we must contend with in our immediate futures. I say this because we faced a couple of big challenges this week, met some great people, made new friends, welcomed home others and we had an awesome working bee yesterday at the church. Thank you to all those that turned up, cleaned up, painted, stripped the scaffold and fed us. It was a great week of seeing community in action! All this, and we are not ready to return to worship. There is still more work to be done on our whare karakia, inside and out, both physically and spiritually. But we are getting there.
I hope you have read all the readings set out for today as they are excellent to ponder and reflect upon. Our gospel is the parable about the sower and the seed. As you may or may not know, parables are stories with different types of stories inside the story, unless you are only looking for one. And today’s parable is no different and it seems so relevant to what is going on in our lives and in the world. There’s the sower or the farmer, the different soils and the seed. When you get past the farming analogy you will see that Jesus isn’t just describing different types of soil or circumstances of life. He is describing the various states of the human heart. We see them in others and we see them in ourselves. What we discover is that we are rarely just one type of soil. We are all four. The four soils describe how we live and relate to others and to God. Jesus tells us what happens to the seeds and he describes the consequences of each kind of life.
The parable invites us to reflect and examine the kind of life we are living. That’s important and there’s nothing wrong with doing that but we reduce the parable to one obvious question. What kind of dirt are you? And of course, we are quick to point out what type of dirt someone else is too. But when we do that we put ourselves at the centre and push the sower into the background. The “what kind of dirt” question is not the only way to read this parable. And that’s when you have to be careful because the question you ask may just be the distraction that takes you away from other ways of reading this parable.
That’s the difficulty of parables. We tend to read and try to understand parables through the lens of our own worldview. The result is that we hear but do not understand, we see but do not perceive. Therefore, the parable doesn’t make sense. A farmer goes out and sows seed on a public pathway, on rocky ground, and amongst the thorns. That’s simply wasting resources and it’s bad farming. You can’t plant seeds on a pathway or among the rocks and thorns and then act surprised or complain that nothing grew. The story Jesus tells simply doesn’t fit into our world. To know that is the beginning of understanding this parable.
Parables offer a different worldview. They give us a glimpse into God’s world and what God is like. They open our ears and our eyes so that we might hear and understand. Parables aren’t meant to test how clever we are. They are stories of grace that test our heart’s willingness to surrender to the generosity of God. That’s what the parable of the sower reveals. As different as the four soils are they all hold two things in common. Seeds and the sower. The sower sows the same seed in all four soils with equal work, equal hope, and equal generosity. The sower does so without evaluation of the soil’s quality or potential. There is no soil left unsown. No ground is declared undeserving of the sower’s seeds. This is not about the quality of the dirt. It’s about the quality of God, the divine sower. We want to judge what kind of dirt we are. God simply wants to sow divine life into ours. And that divine life is Jesus Christ. No life or person is left out, no soil is left unsown. This so humbling when you think everything is fine and you got everything under control and then you realise that it’s not you but God directing our lives and everything we do and not us.
This parable is about God’s faithfulness and not about farming, soil quality or how things work in this world. In God’s world, wastefulness gives way to hope, inefficiency to love, and profitability to generosity. As long as we remain faithful and keep sowing Jesus Christ wherever we go and allowing our lives to be sown with the divine seed of God then the end result must surely be to become more Christlike. Amen.
Collect: Farmer God. Good soil brings forth a hundredfold of grain. May we be that soil; vibrant, deep and teeming with life. Through Jesus Christ our Liberator, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
The Venerable Kaio Karipa Chaplain Sydney Maori Anglican Fellowship Church of Te Wairua Tapu www.tewairuatapu.com.au
Sentence: ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’ Matthew 11: 28
Tena koutou katoa e te whanau o Te Wairua Tapu.
Well whanau, I am sure some of you have seen what’s happening at our church. Work has gone from small to major! And then, in today’s gospel, Jesus says, ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’
These verses sound so easy to follow. If we are struggling and feel like we are carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders, don’t despair, we just need to handover all our problems to Jesus and our lives will be magically fixed. Simple stuff, and it is, until it doesn’t work or things go wrong, especially when our wairua can’t find any rest. I definitely know the feeling. We are so consumed with living life everyday that no matter how hard we try, we just can’t find the time or space to really rest our souls. So the burden or yoke we carry continues to weigh us down. When this happens, we get disappointed or become disillusioned with the whole concept of faith and doubt kicks in.
Therefore, we need to ask ourselves what or whom are we burdened too? To what or whom do we surrender ourselves too? What or who takes priority in our lives? These questions ultimately determine how we live, how we relate to others and how we make all our decisions. We are all bound to something: work, family, another person, money, power, success, reputation, etc. Sometimes our burden are more internal: like fear, failure, anxiety, anger, beliefs, opinions and the losses of loved ones. No matter what they are, the attachment we have to them, we depend upon, whether good or bad, to give our lives meaning and direction. We all got them and usually there’s more than one!
So what burdens do you wear? Which one is number one? As Christians, we know the right answer. Jesus. Why? Because do we really live like him? Is it reflected by our actions and in our relationships? Apparently, it wasn’t in the community that Jesus was speaking too. If we are going to call ourselves Christians then we must fully commit ourselves to Christ. He must be our number one and determining burden. We can’t just hear the gospel, say some prayers, take Communion and then hope everything is going to be sweet. The gospel of Jesus Christ demands a response. That’s why Jesus is so harsh with his words. The people have seen God among them, they have witnessed the signs. Jesus has cleansed and healed their sick, calmed the sea, cast out demons, forgiven sins and yet, they still reject him. Sometimes we are like those little kids, unhappy with whatever is offered to us. In other words, we want the gospel to fit our beliefs, our desires and our agendas rather than shaping them to fit the gospel. That’s not an option for Jesus. We can either celebrate and give thanks for God coming in Jesus or mourn our sins, the brokenness of our lives and the pain in which the world inflicts upon us. But we must respond. We gotta choose one or the other. Either one is to wear the yoke of Christ. Both choices will influence our lives and our priorities.
So what does that mean for us? It means we need to take seriously our life of discipleship. Our prayers need to be more intimate with God rather than demanding and expecting what we want in return. We need to know the areas of service in which God wants us to work. Is it finding justice and giving dignity back to others. Caring for the poor, feeding the hungry and defending the oppressed. Maybe it’s all these things. We are to love our enemies, offer forgiveness before it’s asked for. Our faith should be evident by how we live and speak. We live day by day praising God and giving thanks for the gifts and blessings we have already received. We let go of our anger and stress. We don’t live in fear and we trust that our daily food will be provided. To be burdened to anything or anyone other than Christ will only leave us weary and tired. This is a spiritual condition, a disease of the wairua, as much or maybe even more than it’s a physical one. Our lives become fragmented and dysfunctional and we end up comparing, competing, and judging ourselves and each other. We act as one person in one situation and another person in a different situation. There is no internal integrity. Our energy and drive is minimal and we are exhausted with no depth or substance to offer. Soon relationships become superficial and meaningless.
Therefore, if you and I are burdened then maybe this means we are not fully wearing the yoke of Christ. Too often we treat our burdens with therapy, addictions, holidays, new things, being busy and striving to be perfect. But internal gaps cannot be filled by exterior things. More often than not we are more burdened afterwards as we were before. The only way of surpassing this condition is only found in sharing the yoke of Christ, the heart of God and the heart of humanity beating as one.
Jesus isn’t upset at the people but his heart is broken because they have chosen a life less than what they were created for, a life less than what God is offering. This is why his words soon become words of love, care, and concern for God’s people. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. To take on the burden of Jesus is to take on his life. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,” he says. It’s about letting go of ourselves and our egos so that our hearts and our minds become like his. To truly experience what matters most to Jesus and to see and touch the world like him. But more importantly to see God through the eyes of Jesus Christ so we can find rest for our souls. The place where we experience the full embrace of God’s unconditional love. Have a liberating week whanau. Amen.
Collect: Unpretentious God, you call us as we are; and in our weakness you find strength. Help us so to delight in who we are, that we are set free to dream of all that we could yet become; Through Jesus Christ our Liberator, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
The Venerable Kaio Karipa Archdeacon Sydney Maori Anglican Fellowship Church of Te Wairua Tapu www.tewairuatapu.com.au
