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PENTECOST 11A
July 27, 2008
SCRIPTURES
SCRIPTURE (Matthew)
-All these parables are about the Kingdom of God. "Kingdom of heaven" is synonymous with "kingdom of God." Matthew uses the former out of a respect for the holiness of God's name
-What is the kingdom? Hidden treasure? hidden coins? precious pearl?, a net? Mustard seed? leaven? light? a ripe harvest? a royal feast? a great banquet? an enormous party, a wedding feast? the actual world? something yet to come? the ideal political order? the church? Zion, Jerusalem? Heaven? These are all metaphors....that's the best a finite mind can do with an infinite subject. Lindy
--Kingdom of God: beyond history, not just in it; dynamic, not static; in the world not of it; divine gift, not human achievement; divine initiative followed by human response. Lindy
-So, wherever you see "kingdom" you might want to substitute "desired future." Wesley
-Too close for comfort is the kingdom of heaven,
-Faith is a paradoxical virtue; faith is a key that unlocks; faith is a transformative virtue that begins with a mustard seed and results in a billowing tree. Faith impregnates and reproduces itself in harvests ten, twenty, an hundred fold. Faith transforms. Eric Knickerbocker
-it seems to me that the Kingdom of God is more of a verb than a noun; the reigning of God, more than the reign. Jesus is not really comparing the kingdom to 5 THINGS, but rather 5 ACTIONS. For example, he doesn't say that the kingdom of heaven is like A PEARL; he says it's like a merchant IN SEARCH OF pearls. It's like a mustard seed... that SOMEONE TOOK AND SOWED, like yeast... that a woman TOOK AND MIXED; like a treasure... that someone FOUND AND HID; like a net... THAT WAS THROWN. It may sound really obvious, but all of these THINGS are useless... unless they are used! So the Kingdom of God is not some lifeless thing that we can look at and appreciate: it is life and action and response to God's call.
--A little kingdom I possess where thought and feelings dwell; and very hard the task I find of governing it well. L.M. Alcott
-The Kingdom of God is not a place but a condition. Kingship might be a better word. definition (Buechner)
-When the kingdom really comes, it's as if the thing you lost and though you'd never find again is you. Buechner
-Why else would he talk about heaven in terms of farmers and fields and women baking bread and merchants buying and selling things and fisherman sorting fish, unless he meant somehow to be telling us that the kingdom of heaven has to do with these things, that our treasure is buried not in some exotic far off place that requires a special map but that “X” marks the spot right here, right now, in all the ordinary people and places and activities in our lives." Barbara Brown Taylor
SERMON: HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT
When you stop to think about it, our most valuable possessions are hidden in plain sight: gravity, faith, spirit, GOD
The Matthew scripture sounds a little like that--hidden and hidden meaning, valuable, in plain sight. There ought to be a sermon in there
somewhere. Here are a few quotes to help you along the way. Lindy
-It's the little things that count. In 1713, there was a club in London for men under five feet tall. It was called the Little men's club. They would meet once a year on the shortest day of the year at the restaurant called the Little Piazza and they were to dine on a meal of ....you guessed it....shrimp! It's the little things that count.
-Don't forget the widow's mite, David and Goliath or that little town of Bethlehem.
-Do you not know that you are God's temple Paul
-In the religious world view there is a "More". In addition to the visible world there is a "more" a nonmaterial layer or level of reality. William James
-Intuition...."seeing into" inside
-The truth already lies within the student. Kirkegaard
-We live in a left-brain dominated world.
-Happiness is an inside job, Powell
-Forgiveness is an internal process
-Faith is the sight of the INWARD eye. Alexander Maclaren
-The INDWELLING spirit Paul
-The subconscious mind is the final frontier.
-sight vs. insight
-The most invisible mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common place Emerson
- Look beyond the fly specs on the window.
-You cannot find wisdom if you look only through your human eyes...you must look through God's eyes..." Gibran
-Transcending: not going beyond but seeing beyond. Chopra
-The brain is wider than the sky. Bradford Smith
-Often, What we see is determined by what's behind eyes not outside eyes.
-The leaven illustrates the invisible growth of the kingdom-
-O world invisible we view thee; O world invisible we touch thee, Oh world invisible we know thee. Francis Thompson
MUSTARD:
-is an annual plant whose seeds are indeed among the very smallest. (People in Jesus' time did not know about the orchid whose seed is the smallest.) It was a common plant which grew and spread like a weed in the eastern world. Though it could grow to a height of six feet or more, a mature mustard plant would not normally be described as a "tree." Usually it was described as a shrub or bush. Stoffregen
-Mustard grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted: But on the other hand when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once. Pliny describes in great detail the medicinal uses of the mustard plant, but it is important to remember that it was then, as it is now, a weed. It is significant that Jesus chooses a seed that when easily germinated tends to take over where it is not wanted. Pliny 79.ad
- both mustard seed and leaven stress small beginnings to great things. (Don't become discouraged.)
- mustard seed- it requires planting, it gives shelter, a safe place to live and grow
- mustard seed could represent God's word or our faith. Transforming power.
- found in all three gospels
- parable is about hope
- small things can become large
LEAVEN
- pervasive
-takes mixing with all we are, expands and makes us whole
- kingdom will spread
- illustrates the invisible growth of the kingdom
NET has to do with openness of the kingdom for all. God will
gather the good and dispose of the evil
- requires sorting out, it nurtures our lives
TREASURE- The joy of discovery. Both treasure and pearl have to do with commitment Same message was given to rich young ruler who was told to sell all he had, give to the poor, etc.
-The kingdom of God is like ..a treasure- requires to loose everything we have, gives us eternal joy
-It’s the kingdom of God when we know that there is absolutely nothing—in this world or out of it—that can separate us from the love of Christ. Now, that’s a treasure worth selling all that we have in order to possess. Barbara Beam
- What is your heart's treasure?
PEARL
-great joy when kingdom is found
--The real truth is the "pearl of great value" that God sees in you and I.
- a pearl- requires searching, we receive the most valuable thing
QUOTES
- Religion is massive, loud, busy; faith is but a mustard seed. Lindy
-The best parable has always been the life of a human being who is able to listen to GOD and live with Neighbors. Wesley
-Growth is not so much advancing ones self as it is becoming oneself.
-Every adolescent is an adverb turning into a personal pronoun. Sheen (growth)
- Within, I find unspent youth. Emerson
ILLUSTRATIONS
1.In 1925, at Dayton, Tennessee, William Jennings Bryan was an associate prosecutor in the trial of the school teacher John Thomas Scopes. Scopes had taught the biological theory of evolution to his students in defiance of a state law prohibiting the teaching of doctrine contrary to the Bible. The defense attorney was Clarence Darrow. Bryan won what became known as "The Monkey Trial," and Scopes was fined $100. But Darrow's merciless cross-examination humiliated Bryan and dealt a fierce blow to fundamentalism. Some say the trial broke the heart of William Jennings Bryan. Several days after the trial ended, Bryan died. Darrow says of Bryan, "A giant once lived in that body. But the man got lost, lost because he was looking for God too high up and too far away."
-In southwestern Oregon, Stout Grove had the biggest, most giant redwood trees that I had ever seen. There was a giant redwood there that had an arch cut right in the middle of it. The road went right through the middle of that redwood tree. I was driving my 1963 Volkswagen Bug and I drove right through the middle of that tree. Then I pulled the car off to the side of the road, and I looked at the sign near the tree. The sign said, “More than 2000 years ago, a seed was planted by nature and it grew up into that massive redwood before you.”
HUMOR
-If you ain't tribulatin, you ain't near the kingdom of God
- May you grow like an onion with your head in the ground
- Grow something else besides old.
- I watch very little T.V.-- I like the real world better. What time does that come on?
CHILDREN
- Sing, This little light of Mine. This Little Light of Mine Talk about buried treasures and how we should share them. Idea from Barbara Beam
- Bring in an acorn. “How tall will this acorn seed grow?” “Can this acorn seed grow up two or three hundred feet, shooting right through the roof of our church, Talk about how small things often grow into large things: acorn, mustard seed, you and I, Jesus, God's Kingdom. Lindy
- Bring in a potted plant and talk about what happens when it becomes pot bound.
- Bifocal vision: found in South America. Fish and look up and at same time look down. In a sense, we do that when we see spiritual things as well as physical things
PRAYER PHASES
-Lord,
we give you thanks for the word that you hide
like a treasure in our heart, for the leaven which is able to
penetrate to every area of our life - for the seed that is able
to grow into a mighty plant... Help us we pray to value that
which you have given us Fairchild
-Your power is found in inward things that want to grow.
-We long for your kingdom to come .Forgive us if we let the wilderness of our world blind us form the promises you have for us.
Forgive us if we lose faith and give up hope. Forgive us if we fail to search for your kingdom where your kingdom is…in our own hearts. Lindy