Revised Common Lectionary for the 5th Sunday in Easter, Year B: Acts 8:26-40, Psalm 22:24-30, 1 John 4:7-21, and John 15:1-8
On Thursday of this past week, a client of the food pantry of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Ellicott City, Maryland, shot and killed the parish secretary, Brenda Brewington; shot and critically wounded one of the parish priests, the Rev. Dr. Mary-Marguerite Kohn; and then shot and killed himself. His name was Douglas Jones. The cutting short of those lives is not the sort of pruning about which Jesus speaks in today’s gospel lesson, but I could not let go of that image as I thought about and prayed about what happened in Maryland. As you all know, we here at St. Paul’s have our own regular food pantry ministry – the Free Farmers’ Market – and, on occasion, volunteers, including me although I don’t work the Market as often as I used to, have been threatened with violence by clients who have clearly had some cognitive dysfunction. The same has happened on weekdays when needy persons have come to the office seeking assistance; we have had uncomfortable and sometimes scary incidents in the office. I have never taken them very seriously. Perhaps I should. But I do not believe that the murder of church workers, lay or ordained, is the sort of “pruning” Jesus is here talking about. On the other hand, I have no doubt that from this tragedy in Maryland there will come much fruit. I have no doubt because I have heard the resolve in the voice of the bishop of Maryland, in the words of the parish and diocesan spokespeople who have interfaced with the media, in the reactions of clergy and laity throughout the church, and especially in the words of the parish’s rector, Fr. Kirk Kubicek. There will be growth from this horrible event because, while this is not the sort of pruning our Lord describes in this gospel lessons, the determination with which those most affected are facing this heartbreak, is the fruit of the Vine which is Christ, the Vine of which we are also branches. Today, in our prayers, we will pray for repose for those who died and for strength for those left behind.
Well . . . .
I hadn’t really planned to do a sermon series about my childhood summers spent with Edgar and Edna Funston, but these “I am” statements of Jesus from the Fourth Gospel keep taking me back there, so once again . . . a story from Winfield, Kansas, fifty years ago.
It was the summer of 1961, that was the second summer my cousins were there as well. Bob – two years old then me, Randy – 20 months younger, and I decided we wanted to build a tree house. So we asked Granddad if we could do that and he said, “Yes.” He didn’t ask which tree we were thinking of using, and he didn’t give us any direction . . . he just said, “OK.” So we proceeded to build our tree house in his prize pie cherry tree.
My grandmother made wonderful cherry pies from that trees fruit. I think those cherry pies are the reason that’s my favorite kind of pie . . . and why I’m usually disappointed when I order my favorite kind of pie in a restaurant. They were my grandfather’s favorite pies, too.
That’s probably why he got so angry when he saw what we’d done. I’m sure he thought he’d never see another cherry pie from that tree again. Back in 1961 grandfathers could still spank their grandsons . . . and he did. Fifty years later and I still remember it. He also tore down the tree house we’d worked so hard to build.
Fast forward several months to June, 1962. Back in those days the Los Angeles Unified School District ended classes on the last school before Memorial Day (which wasn’t always on a Monday like it is now) and started them on the Tuesday after Labor Day (which always was the first Monday of September). My mom would always arrange to take a week of vacation the second week of June so she could drive me to Kansas, so I’d usually arrive at my grandparents sometime between the 5th and the 10th of June. That just happens to be cherry picking season in southeast Kansas. I usually looked forward to that . . . but not in 1962. Like my granddad, I was sure there would be no cherry harvest, and I was sure that he would again make his displeasure known.
Well, contrary to all expectations, not only was there a cherry harvest, it was the largest harvest from that tree in several years. My grandfather’s first words to me that summer were, “I owe you an apology. I guess that tree needed pruning.” It wasn’t the most attractive and artful job of pruning that Bob and Randy and I had done, but it was effective. We enjoyed more cherry pies that summer than you could imagine! And Grammy canned cherries for weeks.
I learned two things from that episode. One was that an honorable person apologizes when he’s proven wrong. My grandfather was nothing if not honorable. The second was the value of pruning. I’m a terrible gardener. I don’t enjoy it and I usually produce next to nothing useful when I try, but I know (because of that cherry tree) the purpose and value of pruning.
So when Jesus, in this the seventh and last of the great “I am” statements in John’s Gospel, talks about pruning, I know exactly what he is saying. I know what pruning is, I know that pruning can be painful, and I know that pruning produces results.
Last week, you’ll remember, we heard another of the “I am” statements: “I am the Good Shepherd,” Jesus said then. These metaphors that Jesus uses, these agricultural pictures that Jesus paints for us last Sunday and today are graphic reminders of our total dependence upon God, our pitiful inability to flourish with his nurturing. Sheep without a shepherd who (unlike the hired hand) remains with them in danger, even at the cost of his life, stray to solitary deaths. Vines without a a skilled vineyard keeper to prune away superfluous, misguided, and barren branches bear little or no fruit. Jesus didn’t say as much last week, but flocks like vines need to be cut back.
Where I was living in Ireland last summer was a livestock producing area. My cottage was on a cattle farm, not a ranch … they don’t have ranches in Ireland! Anyway, my landlords, John and Marion, would by a dozen or so steer calves each year, fatten them for some several months, and then sell them to be slaughtered for beef. One evening over a beer, John told me that one gets to know the cows; they each have a personality and as one moves them from field to field you get to know them. So when slaughter time comes, it is sort of sad. “But,” he said, “I don’t know how my neighbour does it.” His neighbour had a lambing operation. He was there for the birth of each lamb. His children would name them. The lambs were practically members of the family! And, yet, at various times the neighbouring shepherd would have to make a decision: which lambs to cull, to send for slaughter, which to keep for breeding stock, which to sell to someone else as breeding stock. “I don’t know how you do that,” John said.
Every day I would take a long walk down that road accompanied by the farm dog Buddy and on some days I would see the shepherd out with the sheep and the lambs. One day I could tell by his demeanor that it was that day, that he was selecting among the lambs those who would be taken away for slaughter and those that would be kept for breeding. This was not a large industrial operation; this was a small family-run farm and I am sure that, as Jesus said in last week’s gospel, he knew each of those lambs. But what had to be done had to be done, sad though it might have made that shepherd.
Culling the flock or cutting the vine in the right place are exacting, necessary tasks which the skilled shepherd or vine grower must do. Unpruned, vines grow in wild, unruly ways, exploding with new branches and great leafy cascades, but few grapes. Unwatched, sheep scatter and lose their way, wandering heedlessly into danger; unculled, a flock weakens and all of the sheep suffer.
Flocks of sheep are disorderly and topsy-turvy crowds. Vines and their branches are similarly tangled and messy. With either, it’s just too hard to know what is what. Not only are we dependent on Jesus the Shepherd, on God the Vinedresser, but our lives are uncomfortably tangled up together. The Christian life is a flock-y, vine-y, branch-y, mixed-up mess of us and Jesus and others.
I think only one or two of us may have culled a flock, but I know that all of us have, at one time or another, pruned our suburban hedges or shrubs. You may have experienced, as I have, a feeling of hesitation, that unwillingness to strip away what have been thriving branches for a greater and unseen future good. But what, with all that tangle of branches, are the alternatives?
Over the past several years there has been much hand wringing over the state of the church, its decline in membership, its loss of congregations, the shrinking of parish budgets, and so forth. We’ve looked at statistical graphs, at flow charts, at columns upon columns of figures, and we’ve pointed fingers at one another, at those who left, at the secular world around us, and at all sorts of other things seeking someone or something to blame for it all. In the Episcopal Church, we’ve blamed our loss of membership on new prayer books or on old prayer books, on women in Holy Orders or on failure to receive women in the clergy, on the acceptance (or the lack of acceptance) of gays and lesbians, on old style music or on new kinds of music, never noticing that the same statistical declines were happening in all the mainline denominations where none of those things were issues. We have wrung our hands and cried out to one another, “We’re dying on the vine here!”
I believe that today’s gospel lesson gives us a different way to look at things. We on the Vine, that’s for sure! But we ain’t dying on it. I believe these past several years have been a time of cutting back, that we are the branches that remain after the Vinedresser has done his pruning, the flock that is now smaller after the Shepherd has done his culling. And I believe that means we are on the verge of a time of new and exciting growth, a productive time of bearing fruit, a time of expanding the flock. We have all that we need to do that because we have the promise of the gospel: “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit. . . . If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”
We know this! These are the most important words in epistle lesson from First John today: “We know that we abide in him.” Right there in your lesson insert; find those words and read them with me . . . “We know that we abide in him.” Again – “We know that we abide in him.” One more time – “We know that we abide in him.” With feeling! “We KNOW that we abide in him.”
We know that we abide in him. We know that we are loved by God, and so we also must love.
The most important words in the reading from the Book of Acts today are right at the beginning lesson: “An angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go’.” All the rest there, that story about the Ethiopian Eunuch, that’s just an example; it’s window dressing. The important words are “Get up and go!” Can you say those words with me? “Get up and go!” I want you to turn to the person next to you; I want you to be an angel to that person; I want you to say to that person, “Get up and go!” Go on, now! Say to that person next to you, “Get up and go!”
Get up and go! God’s love, our love must send us out, out of the church, out of our comfort zone, into the uncomfortable and unlovable circumstances around us. We must get up and go into places where love is absent; we must get up and go to people to whom love is simply unknown. To abide in Jesus, to be loved by God is to be given a mission, a mission to get up and go with what we know to those who cannot accept it, to the destitute, the broken, the lost, the hopeless; a mission to get up and go, not to tell them what we know, but to show them what we know, through our lives and by our actions. That is how and when we will bear fruit; that is how and when we will grow. Not merely to know that we abide in him, but to show that we abide in him!
We know … so get up and go … and show. Know, go, show! That is how we shall bear fruit and grow.
Let us pray:
Heavenly Father, you know our world is broken, sinful, and shameful, filled with hate and with pain. Because of that brokenness and pain Brenda, and Mary-Marguerite, and Douglas died. Because of that brokenness and pain your Son our Savior Jesus Christ died. But in him you showed us that your love and your life know no bounds, are held back by no obstacles, not even death. Give us the faith to know that we abide in him, the faith to get up and go, the faith to show love even to the least lovable of people, in the least lovable of places, at the least lovable of times; Lord, give us the faith to know, to go, and to show, that we may bear fruit and grow, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
I’ve been fascinated by the Shekhinah, which is what the cloud and fire described here are all about, for years. The Hebrew word which names the pillar of fire and cloud which accompanied the escaped slaves on their trek across the Sinai desert means “the Presence”, i.e., the presence of God. Whether the Shekhinah is separate from God has been a matter of some debate in Judaism for centuries. Moses Maimonides, also known as Rambam, the 12th Century Egyptian Jewish philosopher, believed the Shekhinah is a distinct entity, a light created to be an intermediary between God and the world. In the next century, the Spanish Rabbi Nahmanides, known as Ramban, disagreed; he considered the Shekhinah to be the essence of God manifested in distinct form. ~ The Shekhinah was believed to be present in the First Temple, but not the Second. In the absence of a Temple, later rabbis have suggested that the Shekhinah appears in a variety of circumstances: when two or three study the Torah together, when a minyan (ten men) pray, when the mysticism of the Merkabah (the divine chariot) is explained, when the Law is studied at night, and when the Shema is recited. God’s Presence is said to be attracted to prayer, to hospitality, to acts of benevolence, to chastity, and to peace and faithfulness in married life. ~ The idea that the Shekhinah is present when two or three study Scripture reminds me of Jesus’ promise: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20) The Daily Office, both Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, ends with a collect said to have been written by St. John Chrysostom which recalls this promise: “You have promised through your well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his Name you will be in the midst of them.” ~ The Book of Exodus makes it very clear that the People of God were terrified of the Shekhinah. They would not go near it; only Moses could do so and, as this bit demonstrates, even he could not approach sometimes. Smart people, those ancient Hebrews! They understood the Power they were dealing with. Not so, us modern folks. Christian writer Annie Dillard, in her book Teaching a Stone to Talk (Harper & Row 1982), makes this point in an oft-quote observation: “Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” ~ We are, indeed, children playing with dynamite – or maybe even playing with a nuclear bomb! Thank Heaven our God is a playful god. I do not believe God will awaken and take offense, but I do believe God wants us to move beyond games, to stop simply playing with the power his Presence provides, and to start using that power for good!
The notes in my bible say that this is alternatively rendered as “. . . anything more than this comes from evil.” The King James Version follows that reasoning: “Let your communication be , Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.” In any event, the plea of Jesus here is for clarity in communication, for plain, simple, easily understood communication. ~ The Letter of James picks up this same thought: “Above all, my beloved, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your ‘Yes’ be yes and your ‘No’ be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.” (James 5:12) Again, a plea for clear communication, an admonition to eschew obfuscation, a command from Holy Scripture to avoid prevarication. ~ In this political season (when, in modern society, isn’t it a political season?) we are bombarded by messages, speeches, advertisements, editorials, robo-calls, and news commentaries, none of which seem to have gotten this message! Today’s 24-hour news cycle and with the ease with which technology allows words and pictures to be manipulated seems to encourage folks to say and publish anything and everything but a “yes” which is truly “yes” or a “no” which is really “no”. ~ We’ve all heard the post-modern excuse for not believing anything: “That may be true for you, but it’s not true for me.” I don’t buy it. Maybe I’m not post-modern enough, but I really do believe there is a capital-T Truth that is true for everyone. We may not all recognize it; we may all be so seeped in a culture in which “yes” is not always “yes” and “no” is not always “no”, but that does not mean that there is no capital-Y Yes in the universe! There is. I’m convinced that there is! ~ Alfred North Whitehead, on whose philosophy process theology is based, once remarked, “There are no whole truths; all truths are half- truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.” While I find process philosophy and process theology very instructive, I respectfully disagree with Mr. Whitehead: I believe there are whole truths, at least one – God. ~ If one believes that, as I do, one should do as Jesus instructed; stick with “yes” that is truly “yes” and “no” that is truly “no”, and make sure one’s communication is as clear and direct as possible.
This psalm is not the only time Holy Scripture reports God’s displeasure with the sacrifice of animals. Consider these words from the first chapter of the Book of Isaiah, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation – I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.” (Isa. 1:11-13) Despite all of the ritual directions found in the Law and in the Histories (see, e.g., Exodus 29, Leviticus 1, Numbers 7, and 1 Kings 18), the Psalmist, the first Isaiah, and especially the Prophet Micah make it very clear that sacrificing innocent animals is not what Judaism (or religion in general) is all about. Micah writes, “‘With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’ He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:6-8) It may be that doing justice, loving kindness, and walking with God may (and often does) require one to give up one’s possessions, one’s livelihood, even one’s life. But such “sacrifice” without the demanded ethical basis, sacrifice done only to curry favor with God, is not what God asks or wants. ~ It is from this ethical stream in ancient Judaism that Christianity flows. It is unfortunate that early Christian writers looked back to the sacrificial practices of the Temple to find an analog to crucifixion of Jesus; we might have seen the Christian religion develop differently if, like the writers of the Gospels, they had looked more to the prophets. Jesus certainly did: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40) ~ So spare that bull! Sacrifices of animals (or their modern analogs, whatever they may be) are not the sacrifices that demonstrate love of God and love of neighbor. Rather, the core of ethical religion is as the writer of the Letter to Hebrews said: “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” (Heb. 13:16)
This is one of those biblical tales that I just love and wish the English would tell correctly. The Hebrew ‘achowr would better be translated “hindquarters”, “rear”, or “rear parts”, or even as “butt” . . . “Back” is just so bland! God is being a little earthier with Moses than that, and in that earthiness I find a counterpoint to the grandeur of this story. ~ This is a “grand” story, a big story, the story of God “choosing” and adopting as his own a whole people, the story of God giving the Law, the story of God continuing the motion, the arc, the trajectory of the whole sweep of Jewish and Christian history. This is a big story! And in the midst of it, here is this same God rather jokingly, perhaps teasingly saying, “You can’t see my face, but you can see my backside.” ~ One of the traditional depictions of the face of God has been that of a bearded old man (think of God talking to King Arthur from the clouds in 
When I joined the Episcopal Church in high school, the last verse of this quotation was the favorite offertory sentence of the parish priest – in the King James Version, of course: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” If he didn’t say that one, he said, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 7:21 KJV) I memorized those verses not by reading them, but by hearing one or the other at every service as the invitation to make a gift to God. I learned the lesson of an active faith, of being public and “out there” with my beliefs, of doing the will of the Father, from hearing those simple but profound verses at every service. ~ I love the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and its many options for worship, but I wonder whether in our quest for variety in worship we have left behind the wisdom of simple, repetitive teaching. In our current worship practice we are directed by a rubric to offer prayers for the Universal Church, its members, and its mission; for the Nation and all in authority; for the welfare of the world; for the concerns of the local community; for those who suffer and those in any trouble; and for the departed . That’s well and good, but the way in which these prayers are offered is left up to the designers of each service or to the presiding ministers and, in fact, variety seems to be encouraged. On the other hand, in our previous prayer book (and all those that preceded it) there was one prayer “for the whole state of Christ’s church.” Every Sunday, the same prayer was offered; the same lesson of the need for prayer was taught. ~ That standard prayer included the every Sunday petition that God “inspire continually the Universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord: And grant that all those who do confess thy holy Name may agree in the truth of thy holy Word, and live in unity and godly love.” Is it possible, just the least bit possible, that some of our current discord in the church is because we’ve stopped hearing these words, stopped teaching and learning the lesson of “truth, unity, and concord”, stopped trusting God to support us in agreement, unity, and “godly love”? Have we extinguished our light, have we stopped shining that light before others because we’ve stopped offering and hearing these simple, repetitive lessons? ~ I don’t know. And I love variety in worship. But remembering those every Sunday offertory sentences, those every Sunday petitions for unity, I’m beginning to wonder.
My father died in an automobile accident when I was five years old. Two things important to my religious life resulted from that. First, my mother and I stopped attending the Baptist church which she and my brother and I had gone to up to that point. Second, I started spending every summer with my paternal grandparents, Charles Edgar and Edna Earle Funston, in the town of Winfield, Kansas, and thus began attending the Methodist church during those summer vacations.
Another reading of that proclamation is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” To my hearing, this alternative version is a bit more imperative; the kingdom seems a bit more imminent when it is “at hand” rather than simply has “come near.” We used to live in that part of northeastern Kansas known as “tornado alley”. If we said a tornado had “come near” that was as good as saying “It missed us! It didn’t hit us.” On the other had, if someone had said a twister was “at hand”, I would have thought it was coming right at our front door! So . . . theologically I prefer the latter reading, but must confess that personally I breathe a sigh of relief if the kingdom merely has come near. A miss, after all, is as good as a mile, and it gives me time to do this repenting and reforming that Jesus calls for. ~ So what is this “kingdom of heaven”? Let’s get one thing clear right off the bat – it is not something different from the “kingdom of God”. Some try to make a distinction (like the notes in the Scofield Reference Bible towards which I acknowledge great antipathy), but a comparison of the gospels demonstrates that they are the same thing (compare these verses: Matthew 4:17 with Mark 1:14-15; Matthew 5:3 with Luke 6:20; Matthew 13:31 with Mark 4:30-31). ~ This kingdom also is not a place far away or near by. The Greek here is basileia ; the Hebrew for the same concept in the Old Testament (e.g., Ps. 103:19) is malkuwth. While both can refer to a physical place, an actual nation state, they are better understood to refer to a condition or fact or authority of sovereignty or dominion; they might better be translated is “rule” or “reign”. This kingdom also is not a time – past or present or future. It isn’t some place or state or condition at which we arrive after death; it isn’t some place or state or condition which will arrive on earth at some future time. So what is it? ~ Well . . . in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is asked by the Pharisees about the signs of the kingdom’s arrival, to which he replies, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst.” (Luke 17:20-21) The Greek here is entos which means (and in other versions is translated literally as) “within you”. Other things the Christian scriptures tell us are found within human beings are the “word of Christ” richly dwelling (Col. 3:16), spiritual gifts (1 Tim. 4:14), and sincere faith (2 Tim. 1:5). The Hebrew scriptures mention peace (e.g., Ps. 12:8), God’s commandments (Prov. 7:1), and “a new heart and a new spirit” (Ezek. 36:26). In other words, the kingdom is an internal, spiritual characteristic of human beings characterized by these things. That’s coming about as “near” as you can get! That’s even more imminent than being “at hand.” If it’s within me, within you, within us, right here in the midst of us . . . that’s a matter of some urgency! We’d best be paying attention to it. ~ It is also characterized by the things revealed in the eight “kingdom parables” of Matthew 13, but that is too much to write about in a short meditation on a sunny day. I’ll leave those to the reader’s own contemplation. ~ Just one final note . . . if the kingdom (in all its characteristics) is truly within a person (or within a community), it will be very apparent by that person’s (or community’s) outer actions, his or her (or their) conduct, his or her (or their) relationships with others and the whole of creation. Here, the words of the Letter of James apply: “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” (James 2:17-18) If the kingdom of heaven is truly within, truly come near, truly at hand in the lives of Christ’s followers, then it will be made clear in works of mercy. I think that’s the repentance and reformation Christ encourages here.
The rest of today’s Daily Office reading from the Hebrew Scriptures sets out the Ten Commandments. My first thoughts were of those and wondering whether the course of world history might have been different if the Lord had laid out those laws in an affirmative rather than a negative style. You know – said something like “You shall hold all life in reverence” rather than “You shall not murder” (Exod. 20:13) or “You will respect your neighbor’s right of possession” rather than “You shall not steal” (Exod. 20:15). But then the ending verses caught my eye and I immediately thought, “Incense!” ~ OK, not immediately … but I did think of incense and liturgy. Smoke and lightning and loud noises and a leader separated from the people to do special things vis-à-vis God (so the people don’t have to do them for themselves, because – God knows! – those things are downright dangerous!). Skip forward several generations and you have the liturgy of the Temple . . . skip forward several more generations and you have the liturgy of the Church. As I thought about today’s Exodus reading, I realized that the liturgy of temple and church is about recreating Sinai; liturgy is an attempt to experience in the here-and-now what the Hebrews experienced in this encounter with God. And I began to ask, “Is this what has put us on the trajectory of irrelevance and disbelief?” ~ The stagecraft of temple and church became the stagecraft of the theatre, of vaudeville, of burlesque, of the stage magician. There is very little difference between staging a good worship service and staging a good theatrical or musical production. Use of “props”, use of lighting, use of stage technique . . . it all started in the temple and the church, and was borrowed by the entertainment stage (in fact, one might argue that the Western European way of staging dramas and other forms of entertainment in some sense originated in the church with medieval “passion plays” and whatnot). And now, today, the flow is in the opposite direction: the staging techniques of the rock concert have replaced the formal liturgy in many independent congregations and so-called megachurches. This is so well-known that there’s even a very funny parody of the situation on 
“Let it be so for now.” Acceptance of the status quo, even if only for a little while, is a hard thing for a change agent like John, but some times that’s what has to be done. Some time after this event, Jesus would use the metaphor of a mustard seed to describe the kind of faith that can accomplish great things. (Matthew 17:20; Luke 17:6) It’s a great metaphor because it reminds us of the need to follow the advice he gave here to John: “Let it be.” ~ As any gardner knows (and this is the time of year when gardners are reminded if they’ve forgotten), waiting and accepting the status quo is the essence of planting seeds. After all the fun and anticipation of choosing seeds from a catalog or garden-supply store, after the activity of preparing the soil, after making the hole for your seed, after covering the seed and watering . . . there is the waiting. If one is an impatient type of person, growing things from seeds is not the way to experience instant gratification. The worst thing about growing seeds is waiting for them to grow. But that’s what has to be done: “Let it be.” ~ Depending on what one has planted, the wait may be anywhere from five or ten days or to as much as six or eight weeks to germinate. Until then, you continue to water soil that just sits there looking the same. You hope for sunlight, because sunlight warming the soil is important to growth, but there’s not much you can do about that. So you water and you wait. It’s what has to be done: “Let it be.” ~ If a change agent like John can be patient, can make a small change and then accept the status quo for a little while, great changes can be wrought. Jesus used the seed metaphor another time. He said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24) ~ Small change . . . patience . . . great change. “Let it be so for now.” And you may just hear the voice of God saying, “I am well pleased.”
