Rector's Sermon - Sunday, July 21, 2002

First Reading	Psalm	Epistle	Gospel
Wisdom 12:13, 16-19	6: 86:11-17	Romans 8:18-25	Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

    Archbishop Desmond Tutu is fond of saying that God created us not because God needed us, but because God wanted us. We are chosen people because God chose to love us, not because we are superior to someone else. Israel was chosen by God to spread the knowledge of God's love throughout all nations, not to keep it for themselves. In the world God intended, we are all desired children. God loves creation, and creation includes all of us living on this earth. Often it is obviously not self-evident that God loves us, and that is why the community of faith always faces a challenge. Disciples are those who live in the world, knowing that they are loved, and seek to make God's love a lot more evident.

    The Gospels never claim that Jesus had an easy time of it. There were plenty of discouraging moments and few occasions of open success in Jesus' brief three year ministry. Yet the Gospels communicate a contagious joy of God's love. We can easily imagine that Jesus delivered his parables with an open smile rather than a frightened scowl. Jesus' openness to children and those generally ostracized from society clearly communicated a God who wants us, welcomes us, and eagerly seeks us out.

    The past few weeks I've been attempting to rearrange and even clean out stuff in our basement. All the Snyders are pack-rats, apparently it is an inherited trait and as it runs on both sides of the family, file cabinets and bookcases are bulging. One of Kluane's and mine's long time customs since we've been married, is to save maps, tourist brochures, travel guides and magazine and newspaper clippings from places we've been on summer vacation. Opening up some of these large folders some ten to twenty plus years old are fascinating. Of course we originally justified saving all this stuff because if we ever went back, we would want to know where that wonderful restaurant was that we had accidentally discovered or the quiet clean motel in a grove of shaded trees we found by chance. By now those restaurants and motels have long since changed hands or been torn down for a new luxury Hilton, and the well-kept beaches washed out to sea or overgrown, but it has been entertaining rereading all sorts of stuff, realizing how much we must have missed the first time or what had been forgotten. Perhaps the virtue in saving all this stuff and perusing through it before it is tossed, is in becoming more aware of all that was around us. Undoubtedly, we will never get back to all the places we have visited; nonetheless, it is fun to plan to revisit some places and discover what we missed the first time. I wonder if there is not a lesson for us as we, as disciples of hope, live in this world. I suspect there is much more evidence of God's love than we ever first appreciate.

    The parables of the harvest all contain a sense of detachment between the sowing and the harvest that is beyond our action. There is a space in the parables and no attempt to fill it. Perhaps it is in such spaces that greater appreciation of the growth process occurs.

    A monk was once asked how does one keep from drowning in cynicism in habitually heartless work. The monk replied if you fall into a lake and you don't know how to swim, you are tempted to panic and say I can't let my head go under and you begin to thrash your arms and legs, swallowing water, quickly exhausting yourself, and soon drowning. Whereas if you would allow yourself to go under the water, your body would come back to the surface on its own and you would float with little effort giving another time to rescue you. I suspect one way of discovering more evidence of God at work among us is learning how to float. Hence revisiting old places and saving twenty-year-old Chamber of Commerce brochures may be a good thing. Living as a person of faith in the world is a lot like swimming in a river with a strong current or wading in the ocean when the waves have an undertow. Constant thrashing about will eventually drown us. We all have need to regain or renew a sense of the presence of God's grace around us. We all have need to be reminded that God wants us here which is why floating and waiting are as much a part of discipleship as doing and acting.

    And I offer this to you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.