Proper 6B, 16 June 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

• 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13.  The Lord looks on the heart
• 2 Corinthians 5:6-17.  If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.
• Mark 4:26-34. With many such parables he spoke the word to them.

O God of Love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Many of you know that I was away last weekend so that I could travel with Emmanuel Music to support them at their sacred music concert at Bachfest in Leipzig. I carried you with me, and not just you who are in the chapel right now, but all those who have called themselves Emmanuelites over the last five-and-a-half decades, because Emmanuel Church gave birth to Emmanuel Music some 54 years ago. Bishop Gates once called Emmanuel Church an incubator of vocations. It’s such an apt description. Emmanuel Church has incubated and continues to incubate the vocations — the callings – of hundreds of people (maybe thousands). You might remember how theologian Frederick Buechner defined vocation as being the place where “your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” 

I want to tell you about a conversation I had with one of the musicians when we were touring the Bach archives. She said that the experience of love and support among the musicians when they are with Emmanuel Music is qualitatively different than when they perform with other ensembles, and that she has always associated that with the location – with Emmanuel Church at 15 Newbury Street. And then she told me something that made my heart so glad, and made the tears spill out of my eyes and down my cheeks. She said that she was realizing on this trip that the ethos of love and support of Emmanuel Church was traveling with them. She said that she was surprised by it and felt it so strongly. She is relatively new to Emmanuel Music, and her testimony reminded me of what another musician said to a group of students more than a dozen years ago – that what she loves about playing with Emmanuel Music is that it’s the one place where she plays the most difficult music in her repertoire for people who are there to love her, to root for here!

I tell you that I carried you with me, but I did not carry nearly enough tissues to mop up my tears at all of the wonder and beauty I experienced on your behalf with and among our band of travelers. A line from Tertullian, the late second-century Christian theologian, kept coming to me as I witnessed countless acts of traveling mercies and grace. Tertullian wrote in the voice of non-Christian Roman adversaries observing the deep concern for one another found in Jesus following communities, “see how they love one another.” Tertullian believed that heaven and earth intersect at many points. For me, heaven and earth intersect when people love one another. Do I believe it? Heck, I’ve seen it!

Another thing I carried with me to Leipzig was today’s Gospel lesson from Mark because I am a lectionary preacher and I’m always looking at the readings for my next sermon. The Gospel story really should start with the verse that comes right before our assigned verses for today. In it, Jesus says that, in the realm of God, the one who has will be given more and the one who doesn’t have, even what there is will be taken away – which is nothing. If the nothing that someone has is taken away, then that person will be given something, right? It’s like a riddle – if the nothing that someone has is taken away, what does the person have? Something. How does it work? Well, Jesus says, it’s as if a sower would randomly toss spores on the ground, do nothing, and things would grow – no idea how. (Nothing becomes something.) In Greek there’s a word for seed and a word for spore – Mark uses “spore” here. [1]  I don’t know what the ancient understanding of the difference was then, but spores are invisible and carried on the wind in nature. Spores are indiscriminate and so is the one distributing them. No other Gospel contains this parable – my guess is it was much too scandalous to imagine that growth and fruit-bearing in the realm of God just happens – no one knows how.

Then to amuse his puzzled listeners, Jesus reminded them of mustard, a weed that grows uncontrollably, into a scrubby shrub that attracts birds. A gardener’s nightmare is what the realm of God is like. It’s messy, it grows wild, it’s unstoppable once it takes hold. Oh, and by the way, if you’ve heard me talk about mustard before you might recall that according to the Mishnah, it was illegal to plant mustard any place where it could not be kept separate from other plants. It was an uncontrollable weed that is impossible to get rid of.

Know this: whenever Jesus uses mustard seed growth as an example, he’s making his listeners laugh. He’s being hilarious. He’s not giving an example of something tiny and precious. He’s laughing about the spice of life and saying that a little tiny bit is going to grow in abundance so watch out! Be careful what you pray for when you ask God’s realm to come on earth. Notice, though, that it’s not any old weed that Jesus used for an example of the realm of God – it’s this amazing source of both flavor and of healing power, this mustard! The realm of God, the rule of love, is spicy, delicious, scandalous, wild, often proscribed, unconventional, and incredibly healing.

Jesus is calling his followers to laughter, and Paul, in 2 Corinthians, is calling Jesus’ followers not to lose heart. He is reminding them to live in love, and he is arguing that those who preach reconciliation must practice it themselves. [2]  Despair is a privilege that Jesus followers can ill-afford. Living and growing in the love of Jesus will change us into a new creation. Love will change us. Love does change us. Love is already doing it. Do I believe that? Heck yeah, I’ve seen it!

I’m not going to spend much time talking about the founding narrative of the anointing of David, but I want to point out that this is a story of God’s regret about choosing King Saul, whose rule was marked by decisive failures. The bible tells us that Samuel grieved over Saul, and that God repented of the divine selection. God sends Samuel out, at considerable risk, to find the next king for Israel, while the current king was still alive. Youngest son of eight, a small boy, David was the outsider, the underdog, the runt of the litter. David’s great grandmother was Ruth, an immigrant. His great grandfather was Boaz, whose ancestors included Tamar, nearly executed for adultery, and Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute. (They were all Jesus’ ancestors as well, by the way.) The enduring message of the Biblical narrative is that the unlikeliest people are called to be vessels of God’s grace in the unlikeliest places. [3] And it’s not just about the ancient past. Right now God, also known as Love, is searching for a new future among those parts of our world, our communities, our own selves that are dispossessed and marginalized. Love is seeking reconciliation with outsiders, underdogs, and outcasts within us and all around us. Right now Love is calling you to discern where your deep gladness might meet the world’s deep hunger. Right now Love is calling you to proclaim Love’s truth with boldness and minister Love’s justice with compassion as our collect for the day prays. Right now Love is calling us to share in divine blessings and extend those blessings to others.

The other quote that came to me again and again this past week as I reflected on Emmanuel Church and Emmanuel Music, and as I moved through the dream of Bachfest and imagined what I would say to you when I woke up! It is from thirteenth-century Persian poet Saadi Shirazi, who wrote:

The world is not a courtroom,

there is no judge, no jury, no plaintiff.

This is a caravan,

filled with eccentric beings

telling wondrous stories about God.

Do I believe that? Yes! Heck, I’ve seen it!

1.  Thanks, as always, to D. Mark Davis for steering me through the New Testament Greek in his blog: www.leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com.
2. Ernest Best, Second Corinthians in Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1987), p. 59.
3.  Bruce C. Birch, “Second Samuel” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. II (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), pp. 1095-1100.