i'm tired of the politics

Last week I preached on the parable of the soils, or the sower, depending on which commentary you may read, or where the Holy Spirit has you at that moment. As an evangelist I've read that passage many times. I'd shared it with kids at rest stops for years on the way home from Young Life camps. This time as I dug into it, I found myself in a very different place....

Jesus told that parable, as he did with all his stories, to illicit a reaction and a response. Jesus is good for that all the time. I once heard it said that Jesus came to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable well that's what he did in the parable of the soils, and in the case of me, he keeps tilling away. By the simple fact that I was in church that day, preaching that God is a good, kind merciful king let me know that the Holy Spirit had done an amazing thing in my life to allow the seed of the Gospel to take root.

So....do you ever get broken over the fact that many don't have the same reaction when they hear the message? I do, big time, and I often wonder if they where given the seed in a really bad package. God answered my question that very week three times in a row.

I took my daughter out for a wagon ride around the block taking a break on Saturday as I finished my sermon prep. I wheeled by a neighbor who recognized us as 'Bucks regulars. We chatted a bit and I turned and said I needed to get back and finish my sermon. "What religion are you" she asked...I told her Anglican, understanding where her question came from. She didn't know "Anglican" so I mentioned that it's like Episcopal, but I had enough of the junk in the state and was just about chasing after Jesus and loving each other. She looked at me and said "I'm tired of the politics, where's your church?" So I told where.

After church, my wife and daughter and I stopped by 'Bucks to get caffinated. There was a twenty something girl at the counter with an arm full of tattoos and a six year old daughter. She kept staring at me to the point that I really noticed. As I was fixing my Americano, she said across the store "Man, I want to go the church that allows the priest to wear earrings! I'm tired of the politics". We had a great quick little talk, I told her where she could find that church.

Later that night I was helping out a friend drywall his kitchen ceiling...a guy who was helping was having a hard time one of his kids, I mean really hard. This guy was broken. So we spoke about kids and the fact that some do great and others do other things and how we can try our best and they just do what they do...and so he turns to me and asks, "where is your church. I'm tired of the politics."

So, here's the deal...what kind of package are you for the seed of the Gospel? What kind of seed do you claim the Gospel is? These three people I met where all sold bad seeds I think in nice shiny wrappers. And when the troubles came like famine, and they harvested what had been sown, it couldn't give them what they needed.

I'm tired of the politics too. I'm not saying that we don't need to be firm in the Gospel, it's just that I'm a simple farmer, who trusts the seed because I have eaten of this bread and rest on the first fruits of the Holy Spirit that has been planted in me...So I'm free to bring the message to some pretty barren fields and sow in some crazy manners...like teaching kids outside the Livingston Memorial Museum in Tabora, Tanzania how to dance the YMCA....call me a fruit, call me a melon, I'm just thankful my name will be called on the Day.

blessings farmers...sow wide and well

b