Sermon July 27, 2008

Pentecost, Proper 12

1 Kings 3: 5-12 Psalm 119: 121-136 Romans 8:12-25 Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-52.

Do you remember back two weeks? Our Gospel reading was the Parable of the Sower, and we learned that perhaps the most profound way of understanding that parable is to see it as a metaphor for God's generous, risk-taking love that produces an abundance beyond our poor human ability to duplicate on our own.

Yet even just forty years later Matthew had another understanding - recall how he says "the seed that fell on the barren ground represents" this sort of believer? It's a different way of understanding the parable - different but certainly legitimate. The Church has been blessed with both.

The central message in the parables is really important to us, because what we know about Jesus comes to us through these stories. And I use the word "stories" intentionally.

Stories carry our truth and convey our identity. We live within them - we're living, today, within the American Story, just as, down the centuries, others have lived with their own, different stories.

Stories tell us who we are, and they're enormously powerful. So we need to pay attention. For instance, today's parables - and, for that matter, the Hebrew story about Solomon - are perfect examples. We learn from Solomon the central importance of Community - of how it must lie at the heart of any of our endeavors. And from Jesus, five parables, images of the reign of God. The Mustard Seed in particular is memorable. A mustard seed was the tiniest of all seeds - smaller than a pin-head. And considered a weed. So God considers a weed to be a great metaphor for the kingdom of God!! That means that last week's parable of the Wheat and the Darnel ("tares") must mean something other than that the weeds are cast into the fire of eternal damnation. And it does - this is the fire of God's refining love - both the wheat and the weeds are embraced into God's kingdom, even if they take different paths. God's reign clearly doesn't look or work the way we expect - and that has consequences for the way we live.

So here's a really important point I want to make this morning: there isn't just one way of understanding any story, any parable. Down the ages Christians have interpreted and reinterpreted, and reinterpreted, and they've sometimes come up with different understandings.

This is, in itself, a gift from God - that we're capable of seeing many truths in one story.

Thing is, though, that the pattern of interpretations through the first fourteen hundred years after Jesus was a consecutive one - when the understanding of the story changed every one adopted that new understanding.

The Reformation marks the first time there's more than one claim to truth, more than one claim to be the right story, have the right interpretation - and look what happened!! Inquisitions, internecine war, murder, death.

You could say the same about the Revolutionary period - the emerging American Story was challenged by the Traditional European Story, and the result was - War.

When our Story's challenged we don't sit idly by, do we? Burn a flag and you're burning a story.........

Which brings us to today. We live in an age where adherence to one, central Story is under challenge. Here's an example.

Been to McDonald’s recently? Or Burger King? Or Wendy's? If you were in a Wendy's could you confuse it for a Burger King? Hardly! Wherever you go - not just here but world-wide - you know. It's what's called, in the world of sociology, a Univocal Institution - it speaks with one voice. McDonald’s, and Wendy's, and Burger King are in trouble. Their sales are flat or declining.

People aren't as interested in 'sameness'. Huge social institutions are breaking down. What's emerging are networks - smaller groups that relate to each other but aren't identical. People now find meaning in smaller networks rather than larger institutions.

In the face of a changing world, and a breakdown in adherence to a central story, there have been at least two responses: be adaptive, or be reactionary.

At either end of the spectrum some embrace change, understanding it both as a positive thing and an irresistibly thing, and seek to 'ride the wave' - to hold on to the core of who we are but be flexible and open to new possibilities.

Others retreat into the familiar, seeking to reconstruct a world where there are no surprises, a world where they were once comfortable, while pushing away those who represent the other way of interacting with the world and dealing with change. When things seem uncertain then there's often a retreat into legalism, into following the "rules" - because if you follow the rules you know where you are.

I think it's a normal human response to retreat from the change into the safe structures of the past - though in the current world we live in it's a rear-guard action that will ultimately result in surrender. What I've described is what's going on in our Communion right now, and that's being played out, to an extent, at the Lambeth Conference of Bishops, now meeting in England, and to the Anglican Communion.

Those who some call progressives are at the adaptive end, those called conservatives are at the reactionary end.

Most of the very conservative bishops - a quarter of the total bishops of the communion - stayed away, and had their own meeting in Jerusalem.

This is actually really sad. The Anglican Communion's identity - at least the one it had until about 10 years ago - was such that we as a world-wide fellowship were perfectly positioned to respond to the sort of change I described - because we're already a network of churches, and not a centralized bureaucracy - we're not a McDonald’s or a Wendy's.

What we now have to hope for, I think, is that the Anglican Communion we used to know can re-emerge.

What will this take?

• A willingness to engage at a personal level with those we disagree with.
• A willingness to embrace an understanding of reconciliation based on all participants being committed to a common solution.
• The recognition that we can't all get what each group wants and remain in relationship.
• And, finally, a willingness to live with the tensions inherent in the real world - where black and white solutions are fantasy - a willingness, therefore, to live with each other while not necessarily agreeing on everything.

That vision is something that has always lain at the heart of Anglicanism. And it has to be our vision here, or it cannot be their vision there, in England.

And what lies at the center of it all? Why the great Commandments! "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

And Micah's vision too: To Do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with God.

And this means, that our attitude toward those who choose to leave us should be unwavering: we should tell them that we'll leave the light on and the door unlocked, and always, always be willing to welcome them back home. Amen.