The Joy of God's Wastefulness

A Sermon

For those of you who read my first memoir, Pastrix; The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint, you might remember the story of Asher, who transitioned while at HFASS. Well, Asher became the first openly Transgender person to be ordained in the ELCA. He serves Highlands Lutheran Church here in Denver, yesterday was his birthday and today I am covering his pulpit…from my living room. This sermon was written for them.

Isaiah 55:10-13
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the LORD for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Matthew 13:2-9

And he told them many things in parables, saying: "Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!"

The Joy of God’s Wastefulness

Like many others, my life has contracted down to something very different than it was 6 months ago. 

I used to travel all the time and laugh like crazy with my colleagues at different festivals and conferences. As a matter of fact, I was supposed to be teaching this morning at Holden Village.  In The Before Time, I would find so much joy in meeting friends for dinner and singing my heart out at worship, and wearing things other than yoga pants. I used to preach in front of people and not in front of my laptop. I used to hug people. 

Now I basically just walk my dog, talk on the phone, watch TV, sit around in my apartment and on really exciting days, like on banner days, I buy groceries.

And in all of this contraction, I fear that I have felt less joy.

Less joy and more judgement.

I judge myself for my daily consumption of ice cream and for the fact that I have not learned to make sourdough like everyone else on Instagram seems to have. I judge others for not being engaged enough in the movement for Black Lives.  From my little apartment I seem to basically hold court every day. 

But this week I became aware that feeling smug is not the same as feeling joy.  And I was again reminded of Bonhoeffer’s thing about how there were two trees in The Garden: the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And how the original human sin was choosing knowledge of good and evil over knowledge of God – we could choose to know God and have life or we could choose to try and be like God by constantly judging good an evil. So often we choose poorly.

This can be pretty easily seen in how we read our Gospel text for today: The Parable of the Sower. Because honestly I think we naturally tend to read this parable NOT as the parable of the sower at all, but as the parable of the judgment of the soil.   

Maybe the point of this parable isn’t judgement at all, maybe it’s joy. Since again and again in the midst of this thorny and rocky and good world, God still is sowing a life-giving Word. Just wantonly and indiscriminately scattering it everywhere like God doesn't understand our rules.

Which would also mean that the thing we call the Word is not something relegated to religious institutions and ordained clergy and the piety police. The thing we call the Word isn’t locked up in some spiritual ivory tower. I am persuaded that the Word of the Lord is anything that brings good news to the poor, and comfort to those who mourn. Whatever heals the brokenhearted. Whatever opens prisons. 

The Word is whatever brings freedom to slaves. Whatever brings freedom to former slaves. Whatever brings freedom to the descendants of former slaves. The Word is whatever liberates a nation from the spiritual bondage of human bondage. 

And God’s Word is scattered all around us… joyfully scrawled on protest signs and heard in newborns’ cries, and seen in city streets and county fairs and shopping malls.  The Word of the Lord is written on the broken tablets of our hearts, it is falling like rain in the tears of the forgiven, it is harnessed in the laughter of our children. 

And as Isaiah says, God’s Word of liberation and forgiveness does what it is intended to do without even the slightest amount of soil management on our part because again, this is the parable not of the judgement of the soil but The Parable of the Sower. 

So perhaps to focus on the lush and ludicrous image of how God extravagantly sows the Word of the Kingdom, is to read the parable in joy instead of judgement. 

And isn’t life just too short, too sacred and too important to skimp on joy?  Isn’t the world too precarious right now to forgo joy?

 Yet joy can so often be the thing I give up when being right seems more important. When the grief of what I have lost feels bigger than the hope of what might come.

Not for nothing, but the Hebrew word from Isaiah text that they chose to interpret as purpose can also be translated “delight”: so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that in which I DELIGHT. Personally I think the word delight might be more accurate given the playful, whimsical imagery that follows For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

What a fantastical, joy-filled, playful image- like it’s Biblical Cirque de Soile….the delight of God seen in singing hills and clapping trees. That image always makes me picture the Ents from Lord of the Rings. Those giant living, talking trees.   I end up picturing these clapping trees from Isaiah holding little Hobbits in their branch arms in what ends up bring a willful conflation of like, Middle Earth and Major Prophet.    

Yet we live in such a serious time. A fearful time. A time when we might wonder what place there is for joy. It makes me wonder if there were those in the time of Isaiah who judged this clapping trees and singing hills business as lacking in decorum. Especially since it was written by the prophet Isaiah to the people in Babylonian exile  - a people who’s lives had contracted - who had lost everything they had ever known.  So I wonder if these whimsical verses seemed like the equivalent of sending a circus clown into a refugee camp.

 But it’s not that Isaiah lacked analysis or didn’t respect the gravity of the situation.  It’s not that Isaiah couldn’t see right and wrong…he was a prophet after all. But sometimes the job of a prophet is not to judge right and wrong but to point God’s people to joy. To remind us that our God delights in us.  To remind us of our true home.  

Which makes me wonder: What would it be like to rather than judging the supposed imperfection of your body, to experience the joy of being a beautiful perfect creation, made in the image of God? What would it be like, rather than judging the unhealthy grocery cart contents of the lady behind me in line at Safeway who also isn’t wearing a mask, to instead experience the joy of seeing Christ’s own face in her countenance.  What would it be like to, rather than judging the wokeness of every person, institution, and event to instead experience the joy of God’s kingdom imperfectly and unevenly breaking in on us all.  I don’t know for sure.  But I’m game to try and find out. I want to choose joy.  And leave being right to God and God alone.  

In closing, I want to say that certain people in my life have changed the way I see the function and importance of joy. Like my friend Theresa Thames, a gorgeous, curvy, dark skinned Black woman who speaks of her own joy as “resistance”. Resistance to the racist patriarchal world in which we live. Theresa and her beloved, Kenny, a powerful, beautiful Black trans man, were meant to get married in the Fall. But they could not see the point of postponing joy in the midst of a global pandemic. So they just went ahead and did it, with 25 socially distanced loved ones in a park. She posted a picture of them embracing under a blue sky, both clothed in white, orange flowers in her hair and a look of such bliss on their faces. 

Her post on Instagram read: 

On Wednesday July 1st, in the midst of a global pandemic and a revolution for Black lives and equality, we got married. Standing under a Gingko tree, encircled by our family and friends, we celebrated joy and Black queer love. 

The Word of the Lord; scattered everywhere, doing that in which God delights will not return empty.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

A prayer for today:

If comparison is the thief of joy, then Lord, help me to not compare my life today to my life 6 months ago. Help me find the joy in THIS life, and in THIS day and to know that it is from you, and it is enough. Amen.

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