June 13, 2021                                                                                                Text:  Mark 4:26-34

Dear Friends in Christ,

            Is ignorance bliss?  Sometimes, not knowing what makes a thing great enhances its beauty. 

            Have you had this experience?  You eat something that is delicious and then you find out it had some ingredients in it you don’t like?  Mom makes a cake and you discover she put sour cream in it.  Should something sour be put in with sweet?  Sour cream helps make the cake moist but you still have a hard time reckoning your taste buds.  Or you are given bread that looks like pumpkin and so you go ahead and eat it.  Did you enjoy it?  Why, yes I did.  I can now tell you it was zucchini!  What? 

            Sometimes a thing is good on its own, and to know too much about it might ruin our appreciation for the good that is in it – ignorance, as they say, is bliss.  Such is the case in the parable of the growing seed that we hear from Jesus today.

“IGNORANCE IS BLISS?”

            It is true sometimes that not knowing what makes a thing great enhances its beauty.  Certainly for the growing seed, ignorance was bliss.  The succinctness of this parable gives it such power:  “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground.” (v. 26)  The kingdom is scattered throughout the whole world.  No distinction is made of the soil like in the parable of the sower.  It is sown in every place. 

            The man then goes about his business day and night and the seed grows without his knowing how:  “The earth produces by itself.” (v. 28)  The Greek term here is “automatically” no further invention is needed or required.  First the blade and then the ear and then the full grain.  Good growth happens even if the man doesn’t know how.  In time, a plentiful harvest will come.

            As prideful, sinful people we are not content with something working without our effort to make it happen.  When churches are dying we want to come up with some program to save them.  When members of our family or friends are outside the Christian faith we ask what can I do to bring them around to the love of Jesus?  How about our own faith life?  We might even take credit there by letting everyone know that we go to worship and Bible study regularly and we pray harder.

            But the truth behind all of these scenarios is not looking at what we can do, but what is done already.  The cake was good the way the baker crafted it.  The Kingdom of God is a beautiful gift because the Creator mysteriously causes it to grow into a glorious harvest. 

            The growth of the Kingdom of God is up to Him, not us.  Jesus highlights that in the parable today.  Man scatters the seed but God causes the growth.  Christ’s death on the cross has redeemed the whole world, and the Kingdom of God is already sown everywhere that the Gospel is preached – in you and me, in the people of God in the Church, in your unbelieving loved one, in your atheist neighbor, when they have heard the Gospel.

            The only growth that is going to happen will occur by God’s design, not by your effort, pressure, stress, or badgering.  It is God who grants the growth automatically.  If it were up to us to accomplish faith and church growth, we would have figured it out in two thousand years – growth would be happening by leaps and bounds.  It happens in God’s time.  Our Lord is more interested in freeing our guilty conscience in his forgiving grace and granting to us a holy and eternal joy.

            The question still lingers – what can be done?  Dr. Fred Craddock was a Professor of New Testament and Homiletics at Emory University.  He had a father who was very critical of the church.  Every now and then the minister would come to the Craddock home to speak with Fred’s dad.  Mr. Craddock would complain they didn’t care about him only his pledge of money.  This would embarrass Mrs. Craddock.  But Mr. Craddock continued this talk for years.

            There came a time he didn’t say it.  He was in the Veteran’s Hospital.  They had taken out his throat.  He was down to 74 lbs. and radiation had badly burned him.  He couldn’t speak.  Around his room were flowers everywhere.  Cards were attached from the Men’s Club and the Women’s Fellowship and the Youth Group.  Every group in the church and many other parishioners had sent cards. 

            Fred’s dad could not speak but he wrote on the side of a Kleenex box a line from Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’:  “In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story.”  “Dad, what is your story?”  He wrote, “I was wrong, I was wrong!”

            There are a lot of desperate people in our world who are suffering emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually.  God doesn’t ask us to be their critics.  He directs us to sow seed.  The Word will do what God wants it to do in spite of us.  He just asks us to share the love of Jesus.  Not to be obsessed with results – just do.  Christ’s love.  We’ve got it to share

            Virginia Laren put it this way:  “There is only one answer to man’s deepest needs, only one source of life.  Therefore, if I know Christ and have studied the Gospels, that makes me either a missionary or a cop-out.”  Where do you stand with this issue?  God bless our trust in the power of the Word.  God Bless our sowing.  Amen.     

June 6, 2021                                                                                   Text:  Genesis 3:8-15

Dear Friends in Christ,

            Naked.  Do I have your attention?  I figure there are two reactions when I say naked.  Naked, all right this sermon is going to be good.  Naked.  Should Pastor be talking about that from the pulpit? 

            If you are familiar with the early chapters of Genesis, you realize nakedness existed in the Garden of Eden.  Before the fall, Adam and Eve lived naked.  Because of their innocence, lack of shame, and freedom from sin, nakedness did not affect them.  They stood naked before God in Paradise.  This topic is Biblical, so if you are little nervous, relax.  Let’s step into the Garden and talk about being . . .

“NAKED”

            Recall life in the Garden of Eden.  Adam and Eve were made to live in a loving relationship with God and reflect for them their own relationship and in their stewardship of creation.  God said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” (Gen. 1:28)  They were defined by the love of God that brought them into being and the honor of being stewards of God’s earth.

            Then sin crept into God’s creation.  The serpent promised they could be like God.  Adam and Eve abandoned their privileged position among God’s creatures.  By coveting godhood, they separated themselves from the life-giving love of God that had made them and defined them.  They thought if they had the knowledge of good and evil, they wouldn’t owe anything to anyone.  But this knowledge didn’t make them more divine.  It only opened their eyes to how evil their abuse of God’s love had been.  It exposed their nakedness. They were now free to define themselves, create their own godhood.  But this freedom proved to be an endless struggle to cover their shame – a struggle filled with pain, doubt, and death.

            Isn’t their naked shame quite amazing?  We understand this if we have ever been naked in front of someone or many some ones.  But their shame was before God, not necessarily each other.  This is why they played hide and seek.  They weren’t hiding from each other, they were hiding from God.  “Who told you that you were naked?”  They would cover themselves with fig leaves but Adam still complained to Eve that she had put his pants in the salad again!

            Ever since the fall, we mark our lives by self-definition.  We are judged by how much we have achieved in life, how much education we have or how much we earn.  We make a statement:  “This is what I’ve made myself to be.”  We dress ourselves up in our achievements for everyone to see.

            There is nothing wrong with all of this unless they become our gods.  “This is what I made myself to be” can never be our creed.  When what we accomplish turns into a means of self-creation, we fall into the same sin as Adam and Eve.  This deceives us into thinking we are naked unless we clothe ourselves with our successes.  This blinds us to the fact that all we are and all we have comes from the hand of God, the only and true Creator. 

            God didn’t just leave Adam and Eve naked.  He cursed them yes for their disobedience but He then promised a covering for sin – a Savior who would bridge a right relationship with God.  He would bring them back.

            We also are not left naked.  We can never do enough to cover ourselves up.  Thanks be to God, by the resurrected, ascended, and glorified body of Jesus Christ, we do indeed become clothed.  All sinners who repent and are washed in the cleansing flood of Baptism receive a robe of righteousness.  The Spirit recreates us as members of Christ’s holy, glorified body in union with our Savior.  He makes us, the Bride of Christ, one with our eternal Husband.  Our Lord and Savior covers us in His holiness and righteousness.  So when the Father looks at us, He sees the clothing of His beloved Son.  Those glorious fashions are bestowed by grace as part of our dowry and inheritance.  Clothed with the robes of Christ, we can enter the divine and holy presence of God with boldness and confidence.  Because we partake of Christ, we presently stand in God’s heavenly presence in this flesh.  We abide in Him; He dwells in us.  And when He returns to bring us into His eternal home, we will receive the radiant clothing of His majesty and glory forever.

            Talking about naked wasn’t so bad now, was it?  What happened to Adam and Eve happens to us daily.  The world tries to clothe us with their constant drivel and their “look at me” mentality.   Through the Holy Spirit we know better.  The love of our Savior, Christ’s love covers us now and into eternity. 

            You can lift your head now . . . it’s time to say . . .    Amen.