Well Sunday we had the pleasure of going down and worshiping with the good souls at the Humboldt Christian Church. It was a very good visit and I was pleased that the sermon was very well received by the Congregation with a great many telling me how much they enjoyed the service. One woman told me she wished she could do a Bible Study with me sometime. A large number of the members told us that they hoped we'd be able to come down and fill in for Howard again, I told them all I'd be delighted to visit anytime. One of the members and his family invited us to go to lunch with them in Auburn, however we had planned to head in the opposite direction after the service, so unfortunately we had to decline the invitation.
After the service we drove by a couple of Churches which happen to not be too far from Humboldt. These are Congregations to which I have submitted my resume and I thought I'd just as well take a look at the Church buildings while I was in the area. All of the buildings involved looked very charming and very much like many of the photos I post of small country or small town churches.
I do have quite a number of resumes out at the moment and I am prayerfully asking for God's guidance for myself and each of the search committees involved. Any and all prayers for discernment are greatly appreciated and desired. Thank you to any and all who take it upon themselves to do so, God Bless You!
We did get the sermon recorded but it's in two parts and I need to splice it and edit a bit of time off the beginning and end of each segment. I'm still trying to figure out the software that came with the camcorder so it's not ready to upload to 'Youtube' quite yet.
I did do something that I normally don't do though in that I preached this sermon from a manuscript. Of course the actual sermon deviated from the manuscript but for the most part I stayed close to the manuscript in content if not the actual wording.
Until I have a chance to clean up the video a bit I'll post up the manuscript for anyone's review.
God's great and abundant blessings,
Roy
Good
morning, we are so happy to be here with you all again. My name is
of course Roy Karlen and I am a classmate of Howard's from the Lay
Ministry Program, or as some of you may recall I am “The Baptist
Guy”.
My
wife Gail is with me today and as I said we are both very happy and
excited to have the chance to come down and worship with you all once
again. I have a great love for small towns and small congregations.
As you may remember, I grew up in rural South Dakota and the older I
get the more I find that I miss small town and rural life.
Ultimately, I would very much like to minister to a congregation such
as yours. Gail and I are looking for a permanent pulpit but in the
meanwhile we are always happy to come to Humboldt and worship and
visit with you all.
Before
we get started with our sermon today let's bow our heads in a prayer
to our great Creator God.
We
desire your presence with us O' God.
Still
our restless spirits, that with quiet minds and reverent hearts we
may hear your voice and worthily worship you.
Prepare
our minds and hearts O' God, that through your Word, read and
proclaimed, Christ may come to dwell within us, and ever rule over
our thoughts and affections as Lord of our lives.
AMEN
Now
I really should confess that I really wish I had been able to be with
you all last week. For I'm certain that last Sunday Howard preached
over the parable of the Sower.
Now
the parable of the Sower is found in all three synoptic gospels, in
Mark, Luke and of course in Matthew so it is obvious that it was an
important parable to the early Christians. The scripture as found in
Matthew was the topic of the Lectionary last week and it was also the
scripture that was used at my Grandfather's funeral, which makes that
bit of scripture very special to me.
The
parable of the Sower was the perfect bit of scripture for Grandpa's
funeral for not only was he a farmer, but he also was a sower of
God's work and word.
My
Grandfather was a tall, handsome man, very much a charmer. He was a
very kind, gentle and considerate man who was liked by everyone he
ever met. He was a wonderful example in this world of silent
testimony, for everyone knew he was a good Methodist and everyone
that met him knew he was a good man.
He
was genuinely God's hands and feet, and cared for everyone in deeds
that were both big and small. When he was younger he was a pilot and
he often flew folks that were ill to the doctor in larger towns or he
would rescue folks stranded by blizzards or washed out roads. If he
couldn't land and folks were in need he would drop provisions to them
by flying the plane low over them. In his later years he was famous
for recording cassettes with audio books or music for people. But
more important than the deeds were the spirit in which he did them,
kindness and genuine concern.
As
I said Grandpa literally knew everyone in the County. Please indulge
me while I tell one story about my Grandfather. It's not
particularly germane to the sermon, I just really like this story.
One
of my earliest memories is of going with my Grandfather to a Pancake
Feed. Now for some reason none of my siblings or any of my cousins
were along with us, nor was Grandmother. It was just Grandpa and
myself. I was probably 3 or 4 years old and I remember walking into
the hall holding onto Grandpa's hand. Everyone was so excited to see
us and everyone came up and said “Hello Roy”, I just held onto
Grandpa and said “Hi” and I think I gave a little wave to some of
them. But I just kept wondering “how do all of these adults know
my name”. I remember Grandpa going back and taking over the job of
cooking pancakes on the grill and I stood by him literally holding
onto his pant leg. And everyone that came by to get their pancakes
again said some form of “Hello Roy, Good to see you Roy, or how
have you been Roy”... I just kept saying my little “Hi s” back.
Getting more and more confused as to how did these people all know
my name.
Now
this is the point in the story where I should really point out that I
am named after my Grandfather. He was Roy to everyone in the County,
but of course Grandpa to me.
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My Grandfather Roy O. Fletcher with my brothers Warren (the youngest),
Brad, and myself (Roy Karlen) on the end. I was 12 in this photo.
WmRoy Karlen photo |
We'll
come back to the Sower later, but for today the scripture is the
parable of the Wheat and the Tares. Please out of respect for the
Gospel, I would ask that those that are able and so inclined to
please stand.
Matthew
13:24-30 and 36-43 (NRSV)
He
put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be
compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while
everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat,
and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain,
then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the
householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good
seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’
He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him,
‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he
replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat
along with them. Let both of them grow together until the
harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the
weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the
wheat into my barn.’”
Then
he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples
approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of
the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is
the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are
the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil
one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is
the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the
weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end
of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will
collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers,
and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will
be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine
like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears
listen!
So
ends the Gospel reading, you may be seated.
Alright
now, let's unpack this just a little bit. First of all this parable
is found only in the Gospel of Matthew. We know that the writers of
both Matthew and Luke almost certainly had copies of the Gospel of
Mark when they crafted their Gospels. We also know that it is widely
suspected that both writers had copies of a document that we know as
“Q” or “the Source”. Since this parable is not found in Mark
it either comes from “Q” or from some other written or oral
tradition that the author of Matthew had available to him.
Now
the fact that this parable only shows up in Matthew is interesting
and potential revealing. Matthew's Gospel is written to a very
specific and unique audience, to a congregation of Jewish Christians.
And the time at which it was most likely written, the Temple has
been destroyed, the Jewish leaders have implemented as part of the
prayers in the Synagogues a curse on the Christians, so as a result
Christianity is no longer merely a sect within Judaism but on it's
way to becoming a religion of it's own.
The
weeds or the tares in this parable are believed to be a type of
rye-grass that grows in the mid-east commonly called darnel. It is
very difficult to discern the difference between darnel and wheat
until the crop develops a head. There seems to be a obvious parallel
here to the difficulty in discerning the difference between the
Jewish Christians and those that are simply Jewish. It is only when
we get to the point where the crop develops the head that we can
determine the difference. That head that shock of wheat is of course
the cross of Christ.
It's
difficult to come to this scripture lesson without going immediately
to the cutting and burning at the end. That's when all those
imposters get their comeuppance so to say. All that end times
dialogue that seems to be so appealing to many. But is that really
what we should be taking away from this parable? It certainly seems
so at first glance but interestingly enough that's not the message
most commentaries feel we need to focus upon.
The
field we are told is the world, who among us has not been a weed to
this world at sometime or another? I'm sorry to say that a very
large “Canadian thistle” is right here front and center.
Marcus
Borg is a well known Christian Theologian and one of the things he
talks about that I really enjoy is the idea of 'lenses'. He tells us
that we need to consider the lenses through which we look at the
world and scripture. Each of us has their own set of lenses which
have been ground for us by our individual life experiences as well as
our fields of study. But for today let's all don the lenses of
looking at this parable through the lesson of the Cross.
The
lesson of love and grace and redemption. Lenses of reconciliation,
renewal and transformation.
Let's
look at this parable as the field not being the world but the field
being our individual lives. Within each of our lives we have allowed
God to plant good seeds and I am sad to say that each of us has
allowed our egos and our own selfish self interests to plant bad
seeds within the fields of our lives. We are all a mixture of the
wheat and the tares and the fact of the matter is that we all need
the grace of God in order to be reconciled onto him. The Apostle
Paul himself stated in Romans that we all do that which we do not
wish to do, and do not do that which we wish to do, none of us are
truly wheat in this field that is the world. We all fall short of
the Glory of God.
When
we look at this parable through the Cross, we see that it's not
simply a story about final judgment but really a story forbidding us
to judge others. If we beginning judging people, we shall surely
make mistakes and destroy fellow believers in the process. If
there's to be any judging done, it's to be done by God and not by us.
Rather if we consider ourselves the wheat we are to live among the
weeds. And what the parable doesn't tell us but what we know from
the message of the Cross is that those weeds aren't really weeds.
They are all capable of being transformed into wheat through the
grace of God. A grace that we humans cannot fully understand nor
comprehend, a grace that we simply must leave to the almighty hand of
God.
Far,
far, far too many Christians go about judging others, especially
fellow Christians. We label others as heretics and nonbelievers just
because they hold a theological point counter to our own. These
people are defamed and often driven from the folds. Rarely do we
look upon those who are different as unique children of God. This is
not what this parable instructs us to do, we are not to judge but we
are to silently witness through our lives and our actions.
Let's
consider this parable also through the lenses of the two parables
that lie in between the verses that the Lectionary has given us
today. The Parables of the mustard seed and the yeast. In the
parable of the mustard seed we have the smallest growing to
extraordinary size, and in the yeast we have a tiny thing spreading
throughout the whole to 'change' the whole. Quite honestly we lose
much of Matthew's message when we cut out the parable of the yeast.
For here we get a glimpse of the transformational event of the Cross.
The yeast is the cross and the dough is the world. The world is
transformed by the smallest amount. So too can the tares be
transformed.
Another
interesting observation is that the story of the Sower is also about
being nonjudgmental. For how many of the farmers here hasn't read
this parable and though “why in the world is he scattering valuable
grain into rocks and stones?” why is he wasting seed on such thin
and poor soil where he surely knows it will wither and die? Well,
the answer is that it isn't up to us to judge the soil in which we
plant the seed of God's word. Not a one of us can correctly identify
were the seed of the word will yield it's greatest harvest. The
history of the Church is littered with the most unlikely becoming the
most fruitful, and we need look no further than the Apostle Paul to
see this truth. In fact we need look no further than Christ himself
who came from the peasant class, the marginalized and the
disregarded. We are not to judge or discriminate where and to whom
we spread the seed of God. We may well see the one time unbeliever
become a minister and advocate for God.
We
are to live side by side with the tares, with our roots intertwined
in fact. To live our lives, like my Grandfather lived his life,
joyfully and quietly being God's agents in this world. And had he
only lived long enough he would have seen some of these acts come to
fruition and he would have had the privilege of seeing of all things,
the 'Canadian Thistle' pick up the Good Book and preach.
I
would like to think that he's watching not only me preach today but
also my cousin who is a Minister in a UCC Church in South Dakota. I
know he would have been thrilled to know that two of his
grandchildren are preachers. For you see Grandfather sowed well and
he did not judge.
Let
us close this sermon with a prayer;
Dear
Heavenly Father,
Help
us to be ever mindful to not be judgmental of others. But let us be
ever mindful of living our lives as a reflection of your love for each
and everyone. Please forgive us for our failings and guide us daily
to a better understanding of you and the path that you wish for us to
walk in your creation.
We
pray this in Your Holy Name.
Amen
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Pipe Organ at First Baptist Church, Omaha, NE
WmRoy Karlen photo |
