“Groans of Prayer” Romans 8:26-27

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.  “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.” 

Dear friends in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

I had intended to preach the Gospel parable this morning, but things happened this last week that made me switch to this Epistle, instead. It happens, often, in my vocation where I sit with Christians who are wrestling with hard questions and issues of life. What do you do when the world is crashing in on you, on your loved ones, on your neighbors, on our nation, on the world? We know something about this, don’t we? Relationships crumble, illness threatens, society is quaking under threats from within and without. Those whom we love the most ache in ways we can’t fix. 

Psalm 42:7 - Full of Eyes
Used with permission

In times like these, you often hear Christians encourage one another with the wise counsel to turn to the Lord in prayer.

                               Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care?
                              Precious Savior, still our refuge - take it to the Lord in prayer.
                              Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?  Take it to the Lord in prayer.

                              In His arms He’ll take and shield thee, thou wilt find a solace there. (LSB, 770:3)

 It’s good advice.  It’s Biblical advice because God Himself invites, encourages, and enables us to pray to Him in all times and places.  And for most of us, so often in our Christian lives, they are words of comfort and hope as we turn, in prayer, to our Triune God who made us, redeemed us, and makes us His. 

 But what about those times when the world seems to fall on our shoulders and there is no conceivable way out.  When the needs are SO great, or the situation is just so complex, or the pain and hurt is so deep, or our own confusion is so strong that we literally have no words that can express how we feel.  I’ve been there, many times – you probably have been there, too. A friend asks what’s wrong and all we can do is cry.  A spouse wants to know what’s bothering us and all we can do is open, close, open, close our mouth and shrug.  The world is spinning, we can feel every thump of the heart throughout the body, and the mind goes blank.  The mouth – which at other times we can’t seem to silence – suddenly falls mute.  There is no word to express the pain, anger, frustration, or hurt right now – all there is left is a groan. 

 If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a groan can be worth a thousand paragraphs.  Years ago, when I was really in the pits of despair, a friend asked me if I had prayed about it.  I remember staring, silent, until one word popped out: “How?”  Have you felt that? How can we pray when we just can’t pray?  How can we pray for God’s grace if the words won’t come?  How can we pray the cry of the church, “Lord – Have mercy?” when our heart, mind, and mouth are like cold stone?  Even reading the Psalms, or Portals of Prayer, or a hymn seems impossible as you find yourself reading the same line over and over and over. How can we pray if we can’t even express to ourselves what is happening, let alone tell another person – even God?  How can we pray when we just can’t pray? 

 When something this terrifying, shocking, complex or confusing happens to us reducing our prayer language from beautifully tuned phrases and sentences to deep-chested groans, what is happening? 

 As Children of God, we live in “in-between” existence.  Today – right now – you and I stand as saints in God’s eyes, having been forgiven and made His through the victory of Christ on Easter morning.  The Scriptures have been fulfilled in Christ, and we have been given the promise of the resurrection of the body and the life which is to come.  But that is the promise of what is to come.  Right now, we are waiting for the consummation of Christ’s victory over sin, satan, and the world to take place when the full enjoyment and knowledge of God’s love will be made manifest.  Right now we, as saints, live in a world where there is great sin and struggle.  Some days, that world crashes against the life of faith – the Germans call this anfechtung – and the juxtaposition of one over and against the other doesn’t make sense. Sometimes this happens in ways that are so violent and so shocking that it literally leaves us speechless, and it reduces our prayers to groans.

 When that happens, the Holy Spirit is there to intercede for you.  Just as the Holy Spirit gives you faith which believes in Christ as your Savior, so also the Spirit gives words and fullness of meaning to our groans.  Understand, here, that I am not talking about choosing to not pray; making excuses for not praying. Here, I mean, being unable to pray. Thoughts, words all fall silent. I want you to know that when you are unable to pray or you don’t know what to pray, it’s not necessarily that your faith has been shattered by what has happened. Your faith might be sorely battered, bruised and tested by what you are undergoing.  But tested faith isn’t the same as lost faith. Remember: God promises that a smoldering wick and a bruised reed will not be destroyed. Baptismal, Spirit-enlivened faith remains: you are God’s children, loved and precious in His sight.  You know that out of that love, God sent His Son into the world to live, suffer, and die in your place, securing your eternal victory in His resurrection on Easter Morning.  You know that you have been saved by Spirit-given faith in Christ, and as a result, you have the confidence of Mary and Martha that on the Last Day, you will rise from the dead to live eternally with Christ.  You believe that as the waters of Baptism were poured over your heads, you were given the blessed names of “Saint” and “Child of God.”  The Spirit, who instilled saving faith into your hearts, continues to live in you and enables you to confess the Christian faith.  The Spirit allows you to believe with hope (!!!) that there is much greater things to come than this world of tears; that one day, Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead; to reunite soul and body, and to take you – His faithful – to live eternally with Him in heaven.

 That gives you surety, confidence, hope, courage, and strength as you walk through the valley of the shadow in this “in-between” existence.  When those days, events, and sorrows knock the very breath of prayer out of you, leaving you to groan in agony, the Holy Spirit continues to abide in and with you, instilling faith into your heart, allowing you to confess Christ as Lord, keeping your hearts and minds through faith unto life everlasting. And, when the words and thoughts and prayers don’t come – can’t come - the Holy Spirit fills turns our groans into the faith-filled prayer of the Church: “Lord, have mercy!  Christ, have mercy!  Lord, have mercy!”  As we groan in our needs and in our agony and in our sense of helplessness, the Holy Spirit takes our longings and true needs and turns them into beautiful petitions to the Father.

 In that glorious mystery of the Trinity, the Father hears those Spirit-carried petitions for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, who stands as your intercessor, the High Priest. There is someone who truly understands that which we don’t even fully understand, being able to put into prayers that which we can only groan!  But what is even better is that the Father hears the Spirit’s perfect prayer for us.  Our heavenly Father searches our hearts and He knows what our true needs are, even if we can’t identify or wrongly identify what we truly need.  And you can be certain that God’s Spirit will intercede for you in the best way, “according to the will of God,” as Paul says.  All of this because Christ Jesus has made you into God’s child, His beloved saint, through faith in His work for you.

 For those times when you don’t even know what to pray, the words of this morning’s Epistle serve as great comfort and joy to troubled Christians.   For even when we don’t know what to pray for, we have an intercessor who prays on our behalf, perfectly presenting our petitions to the Heavenly Father for us. In our helplessness, our gracious triune God steps in to give us what we need.  In Christ, God’s Son, we are holy and have the right to prayer.  Through the Holy Spirit’s intercession, just the right prayers are offered for us, even when we can’t pray for ourselves.  And our loving Father will hear, and grant us the things we truly need, even when we don’t know what to pray.  In Jesus’ Name.  Amen.

 Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more that all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever!  Amen! (Eph. 3:20).

 

 

The Sower, The Seed, and a Mysterious Surprise - Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is from the Gospel lesson from Matthew 13.

When I was a student at Zion Lutheran School in Walburg, we were taught that a parable is an “earthly story with a heavenly meaning.” Not bad, but I think we can do better – after all, Jesus says that the purpose of a parable is “to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven,” understanding that “secret” means things that are hidden temporarily but are waiting to be revealed. But the challenge of calling it the kingdom of heaven is that we think of kingdoms as places, locations, like the United Kingdom or the fictional Kingdom of Narnia. Instead of thinking of this as a place, a noun, let’s instead think of this as a verb – the kingdoming, or less awkward, the reigning work of Jesus as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So, for our definition we’ll describe a parable, then, as a story to help us see and understand the reigning work of Jesus as God’s anointed one. And, because these stories tell us something about Jesus, there is often a unique twist, an unexpected element that catches us off guard from what is considered the norm.

So, now that we know what a parable is, let’s speak to the story. It’s quite simple: a sower goes out to sow seeds. Depending on where the seeds land, some are eaten by birds, some choked out by thorns, some die in the heat, and still others produce wonderfully. Easy – right? Maybe not, since not even the disciples didn’t understand, having to ask Jesus for clarification. So, maybe there is more to this story than first meets our eyes. So, with our own eyes open and our hearts inclined to Jesus, let’s consider this story anew.

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I have it on good authority that sowing grain by hand is a bit of an art, and a lost one at that. Now we use grain drills, air seeders, and planters to precisely and carefully place each seed 1.8 inches deep, about an inch from its neighbor, in rows that are 5-8 inches apart. Until the late 1800s, a sower dipped his hand into a bag of seed carried across the shoulder and then swinging the arm in an arc, let the seeds dribble through his fingers, fast enough to cover the ground but slow enough to not get clumps of plants that can’t grow and open ground elsewhere. A good sower knew exactly how to use the wind to disperse the seeds in the field he tilled and prepared so carefully, not wasting the seeds and their potential harvest. Each seed is precious; each seed is valuable, the product of the previous season’s crop, carefully reserved to be replanted and produce its own crop the following year.

That’s how it’s supposed to go: deliberate, carefully sowing of seeds to maximize return on investment, labor and sweat.

But that’s not what Jesus says. This sower-of-seeds grabs handfuls of seeds and just starts flinging them every which way, willy-nilly, caring neither whit nor whim where they land. Good soil here, hard-packed soil there, rocks over yonder and thorny wasteland that way, this sower seems absolutely irresponsible in how he distributes the seeds. This is the part of the story that makes the listeners say, “Waitaminute! What kind of sower would be so wasteful, so reckless with his sowing?” You can understand why. Let’s say you bought a hundred pounds of Bermuda seed for your yard and hired a guy to spread the seeds for you. You watch out your window as he throws 25 pounds into the street, 25 pounds slung into the neighbor’s scraggly, never-watered weed patch that he calls “lawn,” and 25 pounds flung into the other neighbor’s xeriscaped rock garden, with only 25 pounds actually landing in your carefully prepared and chemically balanced yard, you would be livid. I mean, yeah, that 25% grows really well, but who is so reckless with 75% even before starting? You can understand why people were not comprehending Jesus’ story. It makes no sense.

Let’s go back for a moment and try to figure out our cast of characters. In a sense, parables are allegories, which is to say that each character in the story represents someone in the reigning work of Jesus. Since Jesus doesn’t tell us, exactly, we have to consider who fits the parts. Of course we like to make ourselves the center of attention. It’s tempting to say that we are the sower and the seed is the Good News of Jesus. So, the parable is one where we’re called to sow the seeds of the Good News out into the world. The work of casting, and its ultimate success, seems to land on us, then. If we would have done better, the seed would have been better dispersed with a better return on our evangelism work. But, remember, the parables tell us something of Jesus and His work, not ours. So, no – I don’t think we are the center of this parable. Who else could the sower be? Well, perhaps it’s Jesus. If He’s the focus of the parable, then He must be the main character, right? He’s sowing the seed which must be the Good News that He is the very One for whom Israel had been waiting. That’s a little bit better – at least Jesus is the one doing the action – but it seems to be too obvious, too simple for it to be a secret, a mystery, that Jesus says it is. No…I don’t think Jesus is sower and the seed is the Good News, either.

Let’s rethink…if the sower isn’t us, if he isn’t Jesus, and if the seeds aren’t the good news, then what – who – could these things represent?

Jesus Himself gives us a clue to this unique mystery. “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom…” Don’t think word equals the spoken vocables that travel through space from the vibrating vocal chords to the ear canal where the brain translates those vibrations into words. Think Word as in Jesus is the Word incarnate, a la John – “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” So, it’s as if Jesus is saying, “Let me tell you a story to show how I am beginning my work of reigning…”

Consider what God the Father does with Jesus: He sends Jesus into the world, scattering Him – to use the imagry of the parable – hither and yon, to those who hear and believe, to those who hear and reject, to those who are indifferent, only wanting to use Him for their benefit, and to those who reject Him. It seems irresponsible for God in His infinite and perfect wisdom to waste – to use the term – to waste Jesus in this way. Why not only send Jesus to those who will listen, believe, and be saved? Why scatter Jesus’ words, actions, and mercy to those who will reject Him and even kill Him? Why, indeed.

Jesus comes to rescue and redeem the world – not just this group or that group, these peoples or those peoples. “For God so loved the world,” remember. So God scatters Jesus out into the world, into places where the weeds of the world and worry distract from Jesus, and into space where the rocks of trouble and persecution makes one afraid to follow Jesus, and into the hardpan soil on the path where satan snatches Jesus through the sinful hands and hearts of the Jewish leaders and the Roman government. Jesus is even spread into the rich, fertile ground of repentant hearts. You know what’s remarkable in the parable? In every place, the seed does exactly what a seed is supposed to do. It may not be what we expect, or what the sower expects, but the seed does its seeding work. On the path where the birds eat it? The seeds feed the birds. In the rocks and weeds? The seed still tries to produce, sprouting and starting to grow. The seed doesn’t give up just because it’s not the best spot. That is true for Jesus, too. Wherever He goes, He does the work and will of God, preaching, teaching, proclaiming the reign of God is there, among them.

But the most important work of the seed in the parable is the seed that lands in the good soil. You know, the imagry is remarkable, but understand why. For a plant to grow and produce thirty, sixty or a hundredfold, first the seed must die. A seed dies so that its offspring might live. Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, used this imagry for Himself. The day after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, speaking plainly of His own death, “Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. ²⁴ Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” It’s both an agricultural truth as well as a prophetic truth: Jesus, the seed, would fall into the earth and buried in the borrowed tomb, dead. But in His resurrection – and, again this time Paul picks up the agricultural imagry – Jesus is the firstfruits of those who will rise. He is the first fruits; we are what comes later.  

So, the parable of the sower reveals the mystery that God sends Jesus into the world. Isaiah tells us that the Word of God does exactly that which God intends. Jesus does what God intends in His words and in His actions. It’s a mystery, itself, that Jesus will not have overwhelming success, from a worldly perspective. Like the parable describes, some will quickly follow Him and just as quickly turn away. Some will even go out into the world as disciples, but when challenges and persecution comes, they surrender. Still others will not believe at all, satan plucking Jesus away like birds eating the seeds from the path. Even here, remember, Jesus does exactly that which God intends. Consider the bird that eats the seeds for a minute. Pardon the image, but what goes in must go out. The bird helps distribute seed – perhaps not where the sower originally planned, but the seed, landing elsewere, still produces. Sometimes, in a strange and left-handed sort of way, God even uses Satan as a means of distributing Jesus as hardships come and persecutions rise and death knocks and in that moment people, formerly under the power of satan’s grasp, receive Jesus instead. The Word, Jesus, does exactly that which God intends.

And, that is what made it a mystery for Jesus’ first-century hearers. It didn’t make sense of how irresponsible and wasteful this sower could be. They couldn’t understand. They refused to believe. They denied Jesus was God-in-flesh. Jesus didn’t seem powerful; His work seemed so small, so trite. His ministry had nothing to do with strength. He spoke of His own death, not making others die. He spoke of His own sacrifice, not the sacrifice of others. He proclaimed grace, mercy, and salvation as gifts given, not earned. It was too much, so Jesus and His work of salvation remained hidden from them. Since they disbelieved, it was as if Jesus sighed and said, “Let me tell this story. You might not understand or believe, but perhaps it will pass through you and someone else will hear and believe.”   

A moment ago, I said we like to be the main cast – at least supporting characters. But where are we in this story? We have to do something, right? No – I don’t think so. A parable is about the reigning work of Jesus, not you or me. But, we are in the parable – just not an active part. We – the Church - are the thirty, sixty, one hundred fold harvest that is produced by the Seed - Jesus. He does the work. We receive life through Him. Rooted in Him, together within the field of the church, we grow and are nourished in the life and death of Jesus and in His gifts of word and sacrament. That’s where the story stops. It’s not about what the harvest does, it’s not about you. It’s about Jesus.

 

Jesus Calls the Heavy Burdened Ones - Matthew 11: 25-30

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

What do you carry?

A cop’s belt weighs around twenty pounds, fully loaded, give or take an extra magazine or two. Body armor adds ten pounds, two pens add a little less than an ounce; body camera, 5.3 ounces; pocket recorder, 2.08 ounces; a CAT tourniquet, 2.57 ounces, and a multi-tool, 5 ounces.

A nurse’s stethoscope weighs between 6.6 – 8 oz, medical shears 5.8 oz; a roll of medical tape, 1.3 oz;  a spare pair of rubber gloves tucked in the pocket and, perhaps, a paper mask add only a fraction of an ounce, with a 5.1 ounce on-call radio clipped to the belt for her manager to contact her while on the floor.

A rancher’s hat weighs 4 ounces, plus or minus for perspiration. His Levis weigh 1.6 lbs, have a 6 oz pair of leather gloves  and 1.3 oz Skoal in the hip pockets, all held up with 2.4 lbs of belt and buckle, and stacked on top of a 4 lb pair of Justin boots with a half-ounce pair of sunglasses to protect the eyes.

A mom not only carries her 19.8lb son, but also a diaper bag containing 80 oz of diapers; a half pound – mmm, better make that a pound of wipes; sixteen ounces of water; four ounces of dry formula; a pound of miscellaneous toys, teethers and snacks all packed up in a diaper bag that weighs almost as much as her son.

A teacher is starting to think about her rolling crate she’ll use in just a few weeks. She plans to stock it with four ounces of #2 pencils and ten ounces of pens for students who forgot theirs; her lunch, 2 lbs, give or take the leftovers in question; coffee in insulated cup, 28 ounces; forty essays, 3lbs; a teacher’s guide books, 2 lbs; laptop computer, 5.3 lbs; and five pounds of candy bars to deliver from her son’s fund raiser.

A pastor wears a clerical cross that weighs 3.2 ounces, a pen that weighs a little over an ounce, carries a three-pound Bible, wears an alb that weighs 2.2 pounds, and over that a stole that, sometimes, feels much heavier than its 1.3 lbs.

Then, there are the things you can’t weigh: An officer’s shield weighs only 3.4 ounces, but it feels like much more with the world watching because of another cop’s professional misconduct. A nurse on the night shift sits at her console listening to a scared 13 year-old boy and his dad softly sob because the boy hurts and she can’t give him any more meds. A rancher carries the frustration of watching beef prices fall, feed prices rise, and watering holes dry up in the drought. A young mother tries to balance a child or two with work, marriage, house, and not having a moment for self-care. A teacher watches a kid try, try, try again and again and finally just give up as classmates mock her for being dumb. A pastor who stands at the graveside as he buries a parishioner who took his own life while the family, sitting nearby, finds no answers to “why?”

What do you carry? What wearies you? What weighs you down? What burdens are on you – emotional, physical, mental, even spiritual? FR suits and tool belts, stacks of paperwork and office reports, kids who are bored and parents who are restless, cancelled camps and rescheduled orthodontists, unemployment, getting back to school, marital problems, medical tests, depression and anxiety. There are plenty of things that weigh us down – by now, you probably have your own extended list. We try to offload to our calendars, try to compartmentalize, and get up each day trying to carry the load while at the same time pretending this is all just fine, everything is fine, I’m just fine, thinking, pretending we can manage. But, we know the truth: we can’t keep up the game, the charade, the façade forever.

These are all real things, important things, serious things that weigh us down. But then there are the burdens of the soul. We are weary of the sinfulness of the world, the hatred that seems so rampant, the sheer vitriol against people whose skin color, nationality, or vocation is different than ours. We’re ashamed that we, ourselves, have at times said and done some of those same things – perhaps not in degree, but knowing, nevertheless, it is still a sin in the eyes of God in failing to love our neighbor in thought, word and deed. The burdens of selfishness and failing to love God above all things; the desire to please friends or family instead of our Lord; struggling to not let money become the most important thing in our lives. We see someone hurting and know we should help with words of comfort and actions of mercy but compassion is overwhelmed by excuses. Fearless, bold speech in defense of the Word of God in the name of Jesus is buried in the name of expediency, political correctness, and “go along to get along.” Even our repentance feels hollow as we surrender again and again.

These things, these spiritual burdens weary us even more than the others. We are tired of stumbling, exhausted from falling, drained from failing. We feel as if we have failed in the spiritual battle as disciples of Christ, having let Him down, our fellow Christians down, and our neighbors down.

“Come.” A single word, spoken to you by Jesus. “Come.” “All of you who are laboring and who are heavily burdened, come to me and I will give you rest.”  I want you to know, He sees and knows the burdens you carry, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual – all of them – and yet, He calls to you. He does not turn you away. He calls out to you, the tired ones, the working ones, the defeated ones, the weary ones, the troubled ones, the bruised-soul ones - He calls, He welcomes, and He gives rest.

Why? Why would He call out to ones like us? Why would He give rest to ones like us? Simple: For He is gentle, and He is lowly in spirit. What an amazing contrast. How often do we think we have to fix things ourselves by our own strength. We use terms like, “I have to be strong for others,” or “You just have to keep your head up.” No, we are not strong. He is strong. Even in His weakness, His strength overcomes all of our burdens. To those who are weary, He is gentle and He offers rest.

He offers it through a yoke. Isn’t that odd. You want to talk about a burden, about serious weight, about being bound to the control of a master. You have seen on TV shows or movies, or even watched parents or grandparents with oxen or mules yoked together, massive wood beams over their shoulders and necks. Yokes imply work, heavy work, hard work. But not this yoke. Jesus’ yoke is Spirit-led repentance. In faith, we confess our own foolish and sinful thoughts, words, and actions, our weakness and our burdens. He binds us to Himself with a Baptismal yoke of grace and mercy to His cross where He has taken our burdens upon Himself, lifting the heavy load from us, promising us a day in the resurrection when all burdens, all weight of this world, will be lifted from us, replaced by eternal joy and celebration in the Kingdom that has no end.

He gives you a foretaste of that rest today, and every day you come to His house. Come to Him and rest. Cast aside the guilt and shame. Jesus died for it; don’t take it up again. Don’t worry about what you will eat or drink this afternoon; instead, be fed by His Word, by His own Body and Blood.

There is one thing about an animal that is yoked: it goes where it is directed. Jesus doesn’t tell us where we will be going, or what we will be doing. No: this yoke is not about work, it’s about belonging – belonging to Him. And, in belonging to Him, you have rest. You have rest because that’s what Jesus is like.

All things are handed to Jesus. And the Father has entrusted to Him the task of making the Father known. This is the Father’s good pleasure, declared over the Son at the Jordan and at the Mountain. Jesus makes the Father known to infants, to the helpless ones, to the weary. He does it by taking our weariness into Himself. He does it by becoming burdened Himself by our burdens. That is the Father’s good pleasure. That is the Son’s willing sacrifice.

This is the spirit’s message to you this Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, the first Sunday in July. Don’t pretend you are strong. It’s a lie. It’s a slap in the Savior’s face. Don’t pretend you can carry the burdens or wear the yoke. It’s not about you, or your strength or what you will do for Jesus as His disciple. This is about what Jesus does for you: calling for you, come, come to me. Turn from yourself, turn from your sin. Receive the rest He offers to you. There is peace and there is forgiveness full and free. Lay aside the burdens and be small, like an infant, like a child.

Take up the yoke, His easy yoke, for it is easy and light for He has born your burdens.
You who are weary and heavy laden: Come.