Thorns and thistles

There’s nothing quite so satisfying as spending time in the garden ripping and tearing out the weeds. Especially dandelions choking our petunias and carrots.  Some of us weed with our bare hands, which is fine when we are dealing with chickweed, but thistles are a different matter.  Their sharp edges alert us when we get too close or handle them roughly.  They are utterly useless plants that doesn’t have a place in a civilized and cultivated garden.  Rather like mosquitos, thistles feel like something God shouldn’t have wasted time in creating in the first place.

So of course, when Jesus told a parable about a wheat field, the listeners would be confused with his story.  They would have related to the workers who are upset at the thistles growing with the crop.  Sabotaging food sources was a favorite tactic of war back in his day.  Destroying crops disrupts the food supply the soldiers depend on to defend their land from invaders.

The disciples would have been fine with the story up until the point that Jesus told of the farmer ordering his workers to allow the weeds to grow until harvest time.  Only then would the thistles be sorted out from the wheat.  That didn’t sound fair!

We don’t want to live with thistles, we don’t want to get poked and scratched by thorns.  We like labels, “this person is wheat, that person is thorn”.  We like black and white thinking, “once a thorn, always a thorn”.  We like pointing fingers, feeling righteous, judging people as safe or unsafe.  We like to imagine all the thorny people get punished in the end.  I won’t get burnt because I’m not thorny, I’m the wheat that everyone wants.  And we all see ourselves as the heroes of our own story.  That habit of judging others and congratulating myself without honest self-reflection is addicting.

Until we come face to face with God.  The psalmist wrote that God searches me and knows me through and through. God made me and formed my inward parts; God fashioned me in my mother's womb.  When everyone else was in ignorance of who I was, God knew all of me.  This set of verses has become the bedrock of many people of faith who are born two spirited or intersex.  Intersex are people born with both male and female anatomy.  About three out of every 100 babies will be born ambiguous.  There are many incidents where a doctor was called in to decide a baby’s gender and made a mistake.  Or did surgery thinking they were fixing a problem, only to cause issues for the child once they hit puberty.  Can you imagine discovering you were a boy at the age of 14?  Or a girl?  These things happen.  And scientists are also learning more and more about brain chemistry that changes how they understand gender and orientation.  The boxes we may have grown up with as children are found to be dangerous to those who don’t fit them.

Jesus touched on two things.  That the community of God was to wait on judging and let God do that.  Because we humans are quick to judge.  We’re fast to put people into boxes.  God says, let everything grow and in good time we will have justice.  But justice without mercy can lead to dreadful consequences. A community of faith can end up pointing fingers at each other, and like thistles, can scratch and tear everyone around.  Mercy without Justice can end up just enabling and empowering the thistles to prickle and scratch everyone around.  Both of those extremes are below the line.  Both of these extremes do not help the wheat grow tall and strong.  Both these extremes do not help the Community of God to thrive.

The other thing is that Jesus taught patience.  We are called to wait to see what will happen.  Who knows what time and patience will do?  The only one who knows whether we are thistles or wheat is God who knows us through and through.  That idea is enough to comfort the shyest and scare the boldest of us. 

We all have times when we are both wheat and thistle.  There are times when we might scratch when we least intend to, or times when someone bumps into our thorns and gets hurt.  It happens.  But God gives us tremendous gifts to help us work through those hurts and pain.  The first gift, sometimes the hardest gift to remember we have, is the gift of curiosity.  Turning to curiosity, is, in the mind of Parker Palmer, a famous Quaker, the way to open ourselves up to how God might see the situation.  Parker Palmer says that when the going gets rough, we are to turn to new thoughts and attitudes. 

“Turn from reaction and judgment to wonder and compassionate inquiry. Ask yourself, “I wonder why they feel/think this way?” or “I wonder what my reaction teaches me about myself?” Set aside judgment. Learn to ask honest, open questions which are ones you cannot possibly ask while thinking, “I know the right answer to this and I sure hope you give it to me…” Thus, “Have you ever thought about seeing a therapist?” is not an honest, open question! But, “What did you learn from the experience you just told us about?” is.

Honest open questions, instead of putting people in boxes, is how the Community of God grows.  Letting everything grow until God’s time, finding a balance between justice and mercy.  Remembering that God knows us all, our thorns, our wheat, our growth, right down to our DNA.  It is a gift and a challenge.  It is not easy for us to talk about the times we get scratched and the times we scratch others.  This is true for us both as individuals and also the church.  Not just our local congregation, but our denomination, even all of Christianity.  But such deep honesty is important for growth and health. As the former moderator, the Right Reverend Doctor Carmen Lansdowne wrote,

a community that can carry its hard histories and its holy ones together — that can name the harm and name the grace in one breath — gives the young something no algorithm or feed can offer them: a place to stand. Not a curated highlight reel of heroes, but a real people, with real ancestors, some of whom were remarkable and some of whom were complicit, and all of whom belong to the story the young are now being invited into.

We are invited into the Community of God.  It isn’t easy, it isn’t fast, and sometimes we get lost in the weeds and thistles.  But God reminds us that we are loved, right down to our uncomfortable places, flaws and all.  With that good news, we can trust God to sort out our thistly moments from our lives, when we let God work through us with the spirit to create justice and mercy, compassion and peace.  May it be so for us all!

Deep, Bold and Brave

Can you imagine being so committed to your faith that you would stand all day to listen to the scriptures?  That’s how the people felt when they committed to listening to the stories of their ancestors, the stories of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel and Leah, Joseph and his dreams, and Moses bringing the people out of slavery.  They were listening to the story of freedom, and they were remembering their own escape from slavery, in Babylon for a generation or more.  They didn’t remember the Temple of Solomon, or the great city of Jerusalem, but they remembered the stories of their parents and grandparents who talked about the destruction of the city, the fall of their king, and being carted off to a foreign land to serve at the whim of other people who worshiped gods they did not know or respect.  These were the generation who remembered stories of Daniel in the Lion’s den, or Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego in the fiery furnace, graffiti on the wall that predicted the death of King Belshazzar, ruler of Babylon.  And then when they least expected it, they were returning, full of stories, full of hope, to stand in the ruins and destruction of what had been a beautiful city, abandoned for decades and with only a few buildings not in need of repair.  And when they heard the words of their past, the description of the relationship God had with their ancestors, the dreams and hopes the people had while following Moses and then Joshua into the Promised Land, rich with milk and honey, they wept.  Scripture gave them a reminder.  That when things looked at it’s bleakest, God still was with them, God still cared.

The same can be said about the Luke passage.  Jesus read his scripture passage.  The passage written by another survivor of the Babylon invasion.  Isaiah who could find inspiration even while describing the disasters that the politics of his time was bringing to Isaiah’s world.  Isaiah was like a Jon Stewart or a Stephen Colbert, able to see the trends and the potential problems that might stem from decisions made by egotistical leaders who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay attention to what was happening in the world around them.  And Isaiah was still, despite the craziness of the times, able to find God at work in his life.  And that in turn inspired Jesus, who also could see what the Roman Empire was doing, it’s oppression of common people, its emperor’s whims having devastating impacts on the Sea of Galilea that suffered from overfishing so bad that fishermen had to patch their boats with pieces of other boats.  Where the power struggles between puppet kings like Herod and Roman Generals like Pilot meant a very precarious life for regular folks struggling to pay taxes and put food on the table for their families.  Jesus had grown up in a poor town, with poor people as his friends and neighbors and family.  He saw the despair and fear and hopelessness they struggled with every day.  And he saw a call to be that voice of courage and hope and inspiration, that voice of change and transformation.  That voice which spoke of God’s healing power to turn around those who felt abandoned, betrayed and helpless.  Jesus, the one whom people remembered when he was a kid climbing trees and getting underfoot, would be the one to bring hope to a terrified and discouraged people.  

I spent a week with incredible leaders from the Yukon, BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, the Maritimes and Newfoundland.  Some are in ministry, some are regional staff.  Some of us cried, some of us laughed, some of us did both.  Some of us were dual citizens, and had voted in the American Election.  Some of us were descendants of refugees or soldiers who fought in World War 2 or who had immigrated because of poverty and violence back home.  Some were from Korea, Kenya, or Zimbabwe, some were from indigenous heritage.  Some were French speakers, or Hungarian translators or only spoke English.  But we all were inspired by the same thing.  A love of scriptures and a love of God.  And a horror of what we saw happening on the news.  A maybe or maybe not nazi salute.  Trans friends worried about being targeted again for more violence especially those who have to travel to the states for work related purposes.  A president who says that people who attack police should be locked up but then releases people who were videoed attacking police.  And here at home, we have people who think this is progress, which is why many in the 2sLGTBQIA community are scared of what might come.  And when a bishop preaches about tolerance, respect and ethics, which is the gospel of Jesus, she is told that she has no right to preach, she is a woman and doesn’t belong in the pulpit, and that she should stick to the bible, which makes me wonder what people think is actually in the bible if it’s not mercy, compassion and empathy.  Above all, she reminded us at 5 Oaks about the importance of being brave in our faith.  When Jesus read that scroll to his community, it was his declaration of his ministry.  That this was the time to be a bold preacher of the bible.  That this was his mission, to heal, to reach out, to stand up for the vulnerable and the weak.  The spirit of the Lord was upon him.  

Is the spirit of the Lord upon us?  Are we ready to be bold and brave Christians who use compassion and mercy to test the politics we hear in this province?  Are we ready to delve deeply into what our Moderator calls us to do, practice deep spirituality that has us weep when we hear scripture, to choose to be bold disciples who will stand up for the marginalized, and to dare to call for justice for all?  One way we can do that is to send postcards to Bishop Budde in appreciation of the truth she has spoken to power.  Another is to reach out to our trans friends and family and listen to their fears and concerns and offer our support.  Connecting with those who are in need is so important right now.  Community and solidarity will help us all find the resiliency to be the people God needs in this hurting world.