Today's Worship Service and Sermon - July 12, 2020

Worship for the Lord’s Day

July 12, 2020

A Note before we begin this day’s worship:

          Our sessions from both congregations at Bethesda United Presbyterian Church and Olivet Presbyterian Church have decided to stay closed for a while longer.  We will continue to worship from home until further notice.  This week I've added a YouTube video link for the sermon.  Next week we'll be working on a collaboration of syncing our regular PowerPoint presentation with words to the hymns with Bob Morris playing Bethesda's organ.   

          Some additional announcements: 

          First, we have put together a VBS program; Creation – God’s Great Big Beautiful World to run this summer, but it will be a Staycation kind of VBS.  Basic kits and the first week will be available for pick-up for all kids between Kindergarten and 5^th grade at Olivet Presbyterian Church in West Elizabeth, PA on Wednesday between 1-3pm and at Bethesda United Presbyterian Church, Elizabeth, PA between 3-5pm.  New kits will be available each Wednesday, same times through Aug 5.

Second, Garrett Little will be celebrating his birthday on August 5.  It is a milestone birthday for him because last year he got to ring the bell at Children’s Hospital to celebrate his remission from Leukemia.   His favorite things are Wendy’s Chili and Frosty.  I thought it would be great to help him and his family celebrate his birthday by giving him a bunch of Wendy’s gift cards.  If you are able, please let me know.

Finally, don’t forget to fill out your 2020 Census.

         

Be patient.  We will be together again, soon!

Until then, let’s begin:

 

Opening Prayer

Lord, nourish the soil of our lives with goodness, courage, hope and love that we may grow in Your word and in Your way.  We thank You for Your presence in our lives, even when we don’t recognize it.  Make us ready to become stronger witnesses for Your love as we receive Your word today and find our spirits and lives healed.  AMEN

 

Hymn  Great Is Thy Faithfulness

 

Prayer of Confession

Seed-scattering God, we come to You this day with so many things on our hearts and minds.  Some of the events in our lives this week may have been positive and caused us to celebrate; but we are constantly besieged by worries, doubts and fears.  These negative things crowd out Your word and we become like the useless soil, unable to receive and grow.  Slow us down.  Continue to pour Your love on us because we really hunger and thirst for it.  Forgive us when we allow all the negativity to drown out Your word.  Scatter again the seeds of peace, love, hope and joy that we may be better disciples for You in this world which is in so much pain.  In Christ’s name we pray.  AMEN

 

Words of Assurance

Here is the Good News!  God is never going to stop showering us with God’s own love...all the time, everywhere…always for us.  Hallelujah!  AMEN

 

Affirmation of Faith – The Apostles’ Creed

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost; born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.  I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting.  Amen.

 

Pastoral Prayer

          O God, who plants seeds of hope and justice within our lives, we are so grateful for our community of faith and for all, anywhere, who hunger and thirst for Your healing and Your reconciling work in our lives.  You know all the things that are on our hearts today.  We ask for Your healing mercies with those who struggle with illness of every kind, with feeling lost and marginalized; for those who mourn and for whom the darkness of sorrow enshrouds them.  We ask Your growth-producing love for all those who celebrate and rejoice today.  Be with each one of us and all those whom we now name in our hearts before You.

 

Help us to reach out to each other in compassion and support, for we ask these things in Jesus’ name, Your Son, who taught us to pray saying; Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.  Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread.  Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.  AMEN.

 

Hymn  Alleluia! Sing to Jesus

 

Scripture Readings

 

Old Testament: Psalm 119:105-112

 

¹⁰⁵Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

¹⁰⁶I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to observe your righteous ordinances.

¹⁰⁷I am severely afflicted; give me life, O Lord, according to your word.

¹⁰⁸Accept my offerings of praise, O Lord, and teach me your ordinances.

¹⁰⁹I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law.

¹¹⁰The wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from your precepts.

¹¹¹Your decrees are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart.

¹¹²I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever, to the end.

 

New Testament: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

 

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. ²Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. ³And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. ⁴And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. ⁵Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. ⁶But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. ⁷Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. ⁸Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. ⁹Let anyone with ears listen!” ¹⁸“Hear then the parable of the sower. ¹⁹When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. ²⁰As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; ²¹yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. ²²As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. ²³But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

 

Anthem – Thy Word

 

Sermon –  Just a note: I don’t often repeat sermons, but I have used this sermon in the past.  Some of you might remember it.  I needed a break this week from reading, researching and writing something new.  You can click on the sermon title and hear/watch me give this sermon via YouTube from my home office.

 

The Extravagant Sower - click here

          The parable of the Sower is one of seven such stories in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew.  As different as they can be, they are all parables of the kingdom of Heaven.  “ the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed,” Jesus tells the crowds on the shore of the lake, “like treasure lying buried in a field, like yeast, like a pearl of great price, like a net let down in the sea.”   He is teaching from a boat just off shore because it is the only place he can find to sit; so many have come to hear him, to learn from him, to touch and be touched by him that there is no space left in their midst.  So, he steps into a boat and speaks to them across the water, his words as full of life and as hard to hold as a handful of the lake itself.

          If the crowds have come for lectures in practical theology that day, then they are going to be disappointed; what they get instead are more like dreams or poems, in which images of God’s kingdom are passed before them – as familiar as the crops in their own fields and the loaves in their own kitchens – but with a strange new twist.  Jesus seems to be saying that these ordinary things have something important to do with God’s purpose for them, that these things they handle every day of their lives are vessels of some sort, illustrations of some truth that seems clear to them one moment and hidden the next – like seed flung to the four winds, like buried treasure, like a net let down to the depths of the sea.

          Jesus’ parables conceal his meaning even as they reveal it, and some say it was how he stayed out of jail and out of trouble for so long.  He could have been arrested for talking heresy and treason, after all, but for talking about seeds and thorns, good soil and bad?  You’re not likely to be thrown in jail for that.

          By speaking in parables, Jesus could get his message across without saying it directly, so that his followers nodded and smiled while his critics scratched their bewildered heads and wondered how to trap him.  Jesus speaks in parables – he says – so that only certain kinds of listeners can hear him – those who listen less with their minds than with their hearts.

          The parable of the Sower is a familiar one to most of us.  In it, a sower casts seed on four kinds of ground: first, the packed ground of a footpath, then ground that is full of rocks, then ground that is thick with thorns, and finally good fertile ground.  Depending on where they land, the seeds are eaten by birds, or spring up quickly and then wither away, or get choked by thorns, while some of them – roughly a quarter of them – take root in good soil.

          I remember seeing this parable acted out in a stage production of “Godspell” when I was in college, a good-humored play based on the Gospel according to Matthew.  Four rambunctious actors dressed like clowns played the seeds, each of them meeting a different fate.  The seed that was cast on the path no sooner hit the ground than other actors making crow noises flapped down and pecked him to death.  The seed that was cast on rocky ground came to life with a bang, waving her arms around and dancing in place, but then an actor carrying a big yellow cardboard sun stood over her until she grew limp and crumpled to the stage.

          The seed that was cast among thorns barely had time to get to his knees before he was surrounded by prickly looking characters who got their hands around his neck and choked him.  He was a ham, who made a lot of noise and took a long time biting the dust, but finally he too was dead.  Then there was the seed that was cast on good soil, who came gracefully to life and stayed alive, bowing as both the audience and her fellow actors gave her a big round of applause.

          Watching all of that, I had the same response I always do to this parable:  I started worrying about what kind of soil I was with God.  I started worrying about how many birds were in my field plucking up seeds and eating away, how many rocks – hardened earth where nothing could grow, how many thorns choking away the fresh seedlings.  I started worrying about how I could clean them all up, how I could turn myself into a well-tilled, well-weeded, well-fertilized field for the sowing of God’s word.  I started worrying about how the odds were three to one against me – after all, those are the odds in the parable, and I began thinking about how I could beat the odds, or at least improve on them, by doing better.

          That is my usual response to this parable.  I hear it as a challenge to be different, as a call to improve my life, so that if the same parable were ever told about me it would have a happier ending, with all of the seed falling on rich, fertile soil.  But there is something fundamentally wrong with that kind of reading of this parable, because if that is what it’s about, then it should be called the parable of the different kinds of soil.

          Instead, it has been known for centuries as the parable of the Sower, which means that there is a chance, just a chance, that we have it all backwards.  We hear the story and think it’s about us, about what soil we are, but what if we’re wrong?  What if it isn’t about our own successes and failures and birds and rocks and thorns but instead it’s about the extravagance of a sower or the foolishness of a farmer who doesn’t seem to be fazed by such concerns, who flings seed everywhere, wastes it with holy abandon, who feeds the birds, whistles at the rocks, picks his way through the thorns, shouts hallelujah at the good soil and just keeps on sowing, confident that there is enough seed to go around, that there is plenty, and that when the harvest comes at last it will fill every barn in the neighborhood to the rafters?

          If this is really the parable of the Sower and not the parable of the different kinds of soil, then it begins to sound quite new.  The focus is not on us and our shortfalls but on the generosity of our maker, the prolific sower who does not obsess about the condition of the fields, who is not stingy with the seed but who casts it everywhere, on good soil and bad, who is not cautious or judgmental or even very practical, but who seems willing to keep reaching into his seed bag for all eternity, covering the whole creation with the fertile seed of his truth.

          We would not do it that way, of course.  If we were in charge, we would devise a more efficient operation, a neater, cleaner, more productive one that didn’t waste seed on birds and rocks and thorns, but concentrated only on the good soil and what we could make it do. 

It has always bothered me, as a backyard farmer, when the seed packet suggests to “thin the seedlings”.  That means to take the ones out that are crowding the others.  So wasteful.  So I meticulously plant each tiny seed exactly 3” from the next seed.  No waste, no thinning necessary. 

But if this is the parable of the sower, then Jesus seems to be suggesting that there is another way to go about things, a way that is less concerned with productivity than with plentitude.

          A number of years ago I read a story about a man by the name of Howard Finster, a folk artist who had painted and planted close to ten thousand of his visions on plywood, broken mirrors, soda bottles, canned-ham tins, old refrigerators, mailboxes, airline plates, sneakers, and even an old Cadillac that was rusting away in his garage.

          Finster started out as a Baptist preacher and served eight or nine churches in rural Georgia and Alabama before he became disillusioned in the early 1970’s.  After preaching 4,625 sermons, he says, after presiding at more than 400 funerals and 200 weddings, he conducted a survey at his church and found out that no one remembered anything he had said.  So he retired from preaching and began fixing things instead – televisions and bicycles when an inner voice from God told him to paint sacred art.  “I can’t,” Finster replied to the voice, “I’m not a professional.”

          “How do you know you can’t?” the voice demanded, and so he began.  His work is both beautiful and bizarre, but equally fascinating is his three-acre Paradise Garden, which was under construction for nearly thirty years.

          I have seen pictures of his garden and seen a documentary of sorts about his vision and his garden, and it is a spectacular sight for the eyes and senses.  Finster died in 2001.  His home, Paradise Garden, is now a public park.  If you follow the walkways that are embedded with old watches, gears, jewelry, marbles, and pottery shards, you can’t miss the twenty-foot tower fashioned from old bicycles, crowned with a cross made out of two lawn mower handles, or the two-ton concrete shoe, or the pump house made from Coke bottles.  There is an aquarium that holds the bones of a three legged chicken, a shed full of old sewing machines, a six-foot mound of serpents sculpted from poured concrete; there are bubble gum machines, bunk bed springs, empty picture frames, and flights of stairs that lead nowhere.

Google Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden and look at images.

          You might think that nature would be offended by such a display but that simply isn’t so.  The whole garden is covered by a canopy of vines heavy with ripening fruit; there are blueberry bushes and blackberry vines and day lilies blooming everywhere among the clutter; there are hens laying eggs and bees making honey and tadpoles turning into frogs.  It is, quite simply, the most gorgeous pile of garbage you’ve ever seen.

          The hand painted sign on Finster’s front porch sums it all up, at least for him, and this is what it says: “I took the pieces you threw away, and put them together night and day; washed by rain, dried by sun, a million pieces all in one.”  The man was excessive to say the least.  Although he said he only puts together one out of a hundred of his visions, he was still extravagant and outrageous.  Most people would look at his garden and want to weed, neaten, organize, put up helpful signs that might make sense of such a mess.  But one of Finster’s signs says, “I built this park of broken pieces to try to mend a broken world.”  And maybe that’s good enough.

And then there is our own modern day Howard Finster right here in Pittsburgh on the North Side.  His name is Randy Gilson.  And his home is called Randyland.  He is a former local waiter, and has almost single-handedly transformed the North Side of Pittsburgh.  Son of a Salvation Army Minister, he says, “If you feel your happiness, your passions, then you surely will be rich.”

If you’ve never been there, google pictures of Randyland.  It is quite fascinating.  Spending an hour or two there any day of the week, lightens your spirit and brings you joy.

          Once upon a time a sower went out to sow.  And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came along and devoured them.  So he put his seed pouch down and spent the next hour or so stringing aluminum foil all around his field.  He put up a fake owl he ordered from a garden catalog and, as an afterthought, he hung a couple of traps for the Japanese Beetles.

          Then he returned to his sowing, but he notices some of the seeds were falling on rocky ground, so he put his seed pouch down again and went to get his wheelbarrow and shovel.  A couple of hours later he had dug up the rocks and was trying to think of something useful to do with them when he remembered his sowing and got back to it, but as soon as he did he ran right into a briar patch that was sure to strangle his little seedlings.  So he put his pouch down again and looked everywhere for the weed poison but finally decided just to pull the thorns up by hand, which meant that he had to go back inside to look everywhere for his gloves.

          Now by the time he had the briars cleared it was getting dark, so the sower picked up his pouch and his tools and decided to call it a day.  That night he fell asleep in his chair reading a seed catalog, and when he woke the next morning he walked out into his field and found a big crow sitting on his fake owl.  He found rocks he hadn’t found the day before and he found new little leaves on the roots of the briars that had broken off in his hands.  The sower considered all of this, pushing his cap back on his head, and then he did a strange thing:  He began to laugh, just a chuckle at first, but then a full-fledged hearty laugh that turned into a wheeze at the end when his wind ran out.

          Still laughing and wheezing he went after his seed pouch and began flinging seeds everywhere: into the roots of trees, onto the roof of his house, across all his fences and into his neighbors’ fields.  He shook seeds at his cows and offered a handful to the dog; he even tossed a fistful into the creek, thinking they might take root downstream somewhere.  The more he sowed, the more he seemed to have.  None of it made any sense to him, but for once that didn’t seem to matter, and he had to admit that he had never been happier in his whole life.

          Let those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

 

Hymn   My Faith Looks Up to Thee

 

Benediction

The seeds of faith and hope have been sown in you; go now into God’s world to scatter the seeds of reconciliation and peace, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  AMEN