Yes, I have scooped manure.
Smelly job. I had some job
working for the City of Madison, Kansas that was so smelly that mom would not
let me come into the house until I put my clothing into a bucket. But the manure does great things for the
crops grow in the field and the flowers around our houses. I have mentioned before that my brother-in-law
Scott started the program at the Segwick County Zoo….called ZooManue: $15 for a
pickup load and $25 for a dump truck load of animal manure. A friend of my parents used to grow tomatoes
beyond compare by digging 6 ft. deep holes in his garden and layering topsoil
and manure. I have never tasted better
tomatoes.
As God’s people we are invited to feast on God’s abundance,
and we are to be fruitful. Each of us
has gifts which are to be used to promote God’s kingdom on earth. As a church we have selected guiding values
and we pray that God will help us live them out because they give life to us
and others. Sometimes we do well and
sometimes we fall short. That is why
Jesus urges the vine grower to give that barren tree another dose of manure and
another chance. There is a wideness in
God’s mercy.
Jesus is in conversation with people around him about
current events. Jesus used current
events to promote faithfulness. And in
Jesus’ time as in our time some churches get it right and others get it wrong.
Fred Phelps has kind of been the one to get it wrong, very
wrong, many times. He loves to be the
news defending his views that God is punishing us for our sins. He obviously thinks he knows more than
Jesus. In the news this week were his
granddaughters Grace and Megan Phelps-Roper.
They departed from his church and said this: “We know that we’ve done and said things that
hurt people. Inflicting pain on others
wasn’t the goal, but it was one of the outcomes. We wish it weren’t so, and regret that
hurt.” These granddaughters saw the work
of God to change their hatred into good things.
Yes, awful stuff happens in life. A meteor falls. A sinkhole swallows part of a house and a
family member. People get killed
watching a movie. And we know well the
horrors when towers fall. Since the
beginning of time, people have wondered the reason for bad things
happening. In August of 2011 Hurricane
Irene hit the East Coast. A leader of a
Vermont Church destroyed a flood created by the hurricane said: “I know God will be there tomorrow because I
know that wherever there is hope: God is there.
The flood only was: God is and will be.
And when good things happen, people have thought of it as
God’s blessing. Super Bowl star Ray
Lewis was asked, “How does it feel to be a Super Bowl Champion?” His answer had lots of enthusiasm but not
much theology: “When God is for you, who
can be against you?” This may be good
post-game excitement but it is not good theology. I do not think God cares too much about who
wins.
The people Jesus was talking to were caught in worry about a
current event…Jesus wanted them to get caught in the current event called
salvation…the greatest and most eternally on-going life giving thing there
is. God loves us and wants us to be
safe, justified, and sanctified in our relationship with God. God invites to feast on the love all around
us this day, and to use the energy to love others.
Jesus wants us to know that we have with the life remaining
chances to get this right.
For a third year in a row a church I worked at as an intern
participated in a great program. I was
an intern at the United Parish of Lunenburg, Massachusetts. The churches call it an Ecumenical Carbon
Fast. Participants receive email each
day with an idea on how to reduce one’s carbon footprint. One idea was to unplug appliances that
continue to use electricity even when off, walk more places, reducing driving
speeds, and buying locally-grown produce.
Now 10,000 participants do that each Lent.
I think Bryan Fischer, who works for the American Family
Association gets it wrong. I read what
his thinks about fossil fuel. He says
that not using up all the fossil fuels would hurt God’s feelings, an affront to
God. It would like at a birthday party
and we do not like the present someone gave us and the person is there. God has given us these, he says, and we ought
to use them. But we are now discovering
that the use of fossil fuels have some bad effects. Why did God bother making all those other
plants and animals if climate change, brought on by burning fossil fuels, seems
likely to extinguish more than a third of them by the end of the century?
Why don’t we use the wind and sun as energy? Enough solar energy hits the earth each hour
to power the entire world for a full year.
There were days last year when Germany generated half of the power it
used from solar panels. We need to use
the brains God gave us. One part of our
spiritual life is to let Jesus help us tend the garden of life.
God has a plan for our lives…yes…I believe that. And I celebrate that there are many possible
plans for each life. There are many
plans and God gave us hearts and minds to spirits to figure them out. God’s plan is Jesus who came for the sole
purpose of showing God’s love and divine goodness.
The people Jesus was talking to were the people who divided
the world’s people into good and bad.
Jesus rejected that and Jesus refuses a straight line from sin to
tragedy.
Yes, we all will die someday…so now is a good time to put
important things first. It is a good
time to re-align our lives into a right relationship with God. He invites us all to do our best to do good
while we can.
Tragedies, nor human brutality, follow any cosmic, God-ordained moral punishment. God is not a puppeteer. Manure happens. God does not promise a garden. God invites us to create a garden, a
community of love.
Jesus wanted people to see that all of us are in a common
place:
Our brokenness
needs God’s healing touch.
We all need
to claim responsibility for where things are.
We all need
to discover some new way to seek God’s mercy.
We all need
to share God’s love.
If you follow the logic of some…Jesus’s death was God’s
punishment for him being the worst sinner of all. Jesus must have been terrible for God to have
him killed that way. But for those who
repent and believe the story has a different meaning.
Two positions I will not take:
1.
I do not believe that we have to live our lives as
if God did not exist. I do not believe
that church is obsolete.
2.
I do not believe we can control events by
praying to God who will fix stuff just like we want.
I do believe God offers us new possibilities through Jesus.
Sometime in my life I was taught something that I now
reject. It was a teaching that to repent
is “Boohoo, I am rotten and I am sorry.”
That is not all of repentance as I read the Bible. Repentance is a change in understanding and a
turning to do life differently…to take action that will bring life to
others. It is a response to God’s
amazing grace. It is learning to trust
God. It is to see God as the sustainer
of life, the giver of the community of faith, the creator of meaning and hope
and love. Repentance is how we get
through the tough times. It does not
necessarily or miraculously change the hard times but it changes us so we can
deal with them.
God does not promise instant relief, but a new way to look
at the world and how God works. God can
be encountered. Life can change, not be
giving up, or trying to control everything.
Life can change by aligning with God.
God wants us to align with divine influence. We can watch the evening news, get totally
depressed or discover some new ways to work for God in the world.
Rowan Williams, who recently stepped down as archbishop of
Canterbury, engaged in a debate last month at Cambridge University with atheist
author Richard Dawkins. It drew lots of
interest. The statement was “Religion
has no place in the 21st Century.”
Williams said that religion has always been about community, and
compassion, and dignity. Dawkins, who
calls himself a cultural Anglican, said religion is a cop-out, and he pointed
out how some religions treat women so poorly.
At the end of the debate Dawkin’s argument lost in a 324 to 136 vote of
those attending the debate.
Here at College Avenue our youth
continue to lead us. Jack Matthews of
our current confirmation class is a member of our worship committee and when it
came time to talk about Palm Sunday, he asked us if we ordered fair trade
palms. ECO Palms is a way to get them
that supports the farmers, helps the forests where they are harvested, and
supports UMCOR. Jack, we have them
ordered. Thank you for guiding us well.
The invitation of Isaiah is to receive spiritual riches that
do not cost a penny, but are riches beyond compare. Bread represents the basics in life. It is what we need to get by. Wine is the biblical symbol for the
celebrations of life, the joys of friendship and love. Won’t it be wonderful it see our children
grow in understanding both. So when
tough things happen to them, they will know God’s sustaining love. They will know that when manure happens, God
is about to do a new thing.
The text from Isaiah was written at a time when people
wondered if God cared at all. God’s
people had been defeated by the Babylonians and carried off to be in
captivity. Where is God they
wondered???? Doesn’t God care? Actually, God about to do a new thing.
As God’s people we are to feast on the abundance God
provides.
Isaiah 55 begins……
Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
And you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
And your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
And delight yourselves in rich food.
