You would think I had learned my lesson about preaching on marriage.  I once gave what I was sure was a home run sermon on that subject.  I don’t remember it exactly, but I’m pretty sure it had to do with commitment and love in a Christian sense being, at least in part, an act of will (ask my wife!).  It got fairly good reviews that Sunday, but I wasn’t expecting what one particular parishioner took me to say the next.  The next Sunday, as I was greeting the people leaving after the service, a woman from the congregation came up to me and said, “Father, I’ve been thinking all week about what you said in your sermon, and I’ve decided to divorce my husband.”

It has been a confusing week, and as a result, this week’s reflection on life comes later than I would have liked.  I trust you will understand.

I have found myself going back in my mind, as I often do in such circumstances, to a place and time when things made more sense to me.  It is a place where I learned about the world around me, a place I always knew I belonged, and a place, most importantly, where I came to know what it meant to be loved unconditionally.  That place is my grandparents’ home in Fayetteville, Georgia.  It is somewhere I learned to stand in the place that gives me my perspective on the world.  

The disciples faced a major problem one evening after Jesus had been teaching all day (Mt. 14:13-21).  A large crowd had gathered, something considerably over five thousand people (five thousand, according to Matthew, “besides women and children”).  The crowd would need something to eat, so the disciples suggested sending them away while they still had time to go into the nearby villages to buy food. 

You know the story.  Jesus instructed the disciples to feed the crowd, but the disciples protested that they did not have enough to go around, only five loaves and two fish.  Jesus told the disciples to give him what they had (all of it, by the way).  After the loaves and fish were blessed by Jesus, they were distributed to the crowd.  Twelve baskets of leftovers were taken up at the end of it all.

I’m in the South for the summer, the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina where the breezes are cool and temperature moderate.  The mountains are exempt from the heat and humidity of the rest of the South, but not from country music.          

I heard an old favorite of the country music canon this afternoon, George Strait’s “A Father’s Love.”  The story is of a father telling his son how fathers love their children—“Daddy’s don’t just love their children every now and then.  It’s a love without end.  Amen.”  It is not at all unlike, though folksier than, St. Paul’s words to the church in Rome:  

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  (Rom. 8:38-39)

One of the first songs I remember learning as a child was “We are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.”  I only remember the first verse from memory

We are climbing Jacob's ladder,
We are climbing Jacob's ladder,
We are climbing Jacob's ladder,
Soldiers of the cross.

Since the Bible story (Gen. 28:10-19) is one of the reading for this week, I refreshed my recollection as to the others.

If Matthew is remembering the Parable of the Sower and its explanation (Mt. 13:1-9, 18-23) correctly, it would stand out among the parables of Jesus for being an allegory rather than something more like a riddle, something that obscures meaning rather than makes the hearer think for himself or herself so as to engage with what Jesus was saying.  If Matthew is remembering the parable correctly, it would be, in my opinion, among the least interesting of things Jesus ever had to say.  It makes me wonder if there might not be more to it than is recorded on the page. 

Yokes—the kind you use to harness a team of animals to a task like plowing or hauling—do not have a positive metaphorical connotation.  In the Bible, they are almost universally a negative image.  See, for example, Dt. 28:48 (“He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.”), 2 Chron. 10:4 (“Your father [the king] made our yoke heavy.”), and Isa. 58:6 (“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?”).

There is one notable exception—Jesus.  He spoke positively of the yoke: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  (Mt. 11:29-30)  So, what’s up?

There are a lot of things Jesus said we’d like to forget.  This week’s reading from Matthew is one of them.  

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.  Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” (Mt. 10:34-39)

Though often referred to as the Holy Comforter, the Holy Spirit doesn’t seem like that much of a comfort to me, at least in the way we normally mean it.  Anything but.

Acts likens the Holy Spirit, not only to fire but to a violent wind.  “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.”  (Acts 2:2)  Not so comforting. 

I once had a parishioner who taught be a lesson about going to church, at least at times other than Sunday morning.  It was a frustrating lesson for me to learn as a young priest at the time.

I was trying to revive the parish’s Sunday school program, which had been somewhat neglected over the years.  I was trying to grow the place, and a Christian formation strategy seemed important to me—give people a reason to want their children to be in church and to want to be there themselves, I figured.