Manuscript of Sermon at Humboldt... video coming soon

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.

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

Pipe Organ at First Baptist  Church, Omaha, NE
WmRoy Karlen photo