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for All Saints-by-the-Sea, Proper 10, July 13, 2008 In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – Amen. I spent three years living in San Francisco after college. It was right as the dot-com boom turned to bust. As I was working for a non-profit, I was on the outside of that boom, living in a dilapidated and comfortable rent-controlled Victorian flat in the seedy part of the Mission District. There was a taqueria, a pawn shop and a checks cashed place across the street, a Chinese bakery on the corner, and lots of illegal commerce of all sorts taking place on the sidewalks. The store front right below us was a martial arts supply store. It was very funky. Literally, our living room window looked out upon a giant sign that said “ninja equipment.” The apartment itself was a surprisingly peaceful space in the center of the storm that was our neighborhood. My roommates were an artist and a musician, both with day jobs. They were very low-key and kind, and had been roommates for several years before I moved in. The artist—I will call him Doug—happened to be a committed Christian, who was going through a period of being lost. One day he was washing his clothes down the street at the Laundromat, and some friendly people came up to him and asked if he’d be interested in coming to a Bible study that was going to be held at their house. Doug was pretty happy to meet other Christians, who were somewhat rare in the artistic scene in San Francisco. He attended the Bible study that night, and then another soon after, and before long he was going to meetings with these new, extremely nice friends nearly every night. Jason, the other roommate, and I never saw these friends, but we noticed that Doug was suddenly busier than he had ever been before, always heading out the door to meet these people. Jason, who had known Doug for a long time, was starting to worry. Jason started asking Doug questions about his new friends, and he learned the name of their church. That night he looked it up online and was alarmed to learn that they were part of a group that was known to be a Christian cult—an actual, bona fide cult that had been banned on numerous college campuses because of its predatory practices. For instance, they used techniques to essentially control the minds of new recruits, including sleep deprivation. We saw them doing this to Doug by over-programming his time, having gatherings and Bible studies, often late into the night, and in the process weakening his defenses and judgment. It was fascinating to witness, and also alarming because it was working. Of course we were glad to see Doug smiling more, and to see that he had quit smoking—a very big deal as he had been a serious chain smoker—but we worried about the day that was coming when they’d insist that he move into a house with the other San Francisco disciples, and require him to give them all his money. Sure enough, most of this money seemed to go into the pockets of the cult’s leader, who was named Kip (and who liked to wear Hawaiian shirts while preaching his firey sermons.) We read online about how to help friends or family members extricate themselves from this cult, with true testimonials of former cult members. We learned also that this cult was telling Doug that only it could bring him to salvation, and that there was absolutely no other way to be saved outside of their group. And if we tried to warn Doug about this, they were prepared to conveniently turn our words against us. They would tell Doug that because the devil did not want Doug to be saved, naturally the devil would use his trusted friends to stop him from entering the one true church that would save him. So that meant if we spoke ill of this cult, our words were clearly the work of the devil! Fortunately, with our careful encouragement, Doug started to ask some questions on his own. For instance, why were only these Christians saved and all other so-called Christians damned to hell? Why were Jerry Falwell, the Pope, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, and even Billy Grahm—not to mention all of Doug’s Midwestern Lutheran family back home—all headed for eternal damnation, and only Kip and his relatively small group of followers able to claim that they were true Christians? The cult leadership dutifully answered all of Doug’s questions for a while—and they had pretty slick answers—but he was never fully satisfied. He kept asking questions when he saw disturbing flaws in their logic, until they finally became very frustrated with him. “No,” the cult answered, “If you are even asking such questions, your heart must be hardened by the Devil. You need to stop asking questions and just believe.” It was a painful ending when Doug stopped going to their meetings. They came to our apartment and had heated discussions with him on the steps, telling him that they really hoped he would come back to their group and not go to Hell. He did not give in, and their pressure ended up working against them. He felt very betrayed, and somewhat ashamed of being foolish enough to trust them. And spiritually he was disoriented. *** How do you grow a healthy faith? How do you avoid the many dangers that Jesus speaks of in the parable of the sower? Doug’s experience with the cult was an example of about the most unhealthy way to try and make faith grow. Jesus speaks of the growing of faith being like the growing of a plant. Jesus likens the Word of God to seed scattered on the ground. We hear this phrase, the Word of God, and we use it frequently here, but we rarely pause and think of what it really means. The Word, or the logos in Greek, is that which carries the power of God, but which comes to us in many forms. It is not so much something that hits us over the head like a lightening bolt, but more like a good secret that we get to unlock. Something that we open up, which brings us closer to God. The Word of God can be found in the Bible, but it is not actually one and the same as the Bible. The Word is not in the words themselves, but rather in the hearing, when the Spirit opens those words up to us. The Word is like a seed in that it often does not appear like much from the outside. It may appear inconsequential. But it contains all power of life inside. Just think the flower that grows from a seed. When it grows, it is more than the sum of its parts—of the nutrients and sunlight and so forth. It is something surprisingly beautiful. In a sense, it is a bearer of the image of God—just like we are when we blossom in our own lives. You can see God’s hand at work in a flower, or in a human being fully alive. It is a little like how a stained glass window does not look like much if you are looking at it from outside of the church, and the light does not illuminate it at all. It looks like just dark glass from the outside. But when you stand inside a church building like ours and these windows are illuminated by the sun, they reveal brilliant images. God scatters the seed freely, pouring it with abandon upon all types of ground. He is not stingy, saving his best seed only for the best soil. But, as Jesus says, it comes down far and wide, for those with ears to hear and with eyes to see. *** If you are a good gardener, you know the right conditions to make your plants or crops or flowers grow. But no matter how good you are, you are not the one who actually makes that plant grow. You are just very good at making the space for it to happen. God is the one who makes the growth. This is similar to how to tend to our faith lives. We are called to be good gardeners, making space for the growth that comes from God as a gift. Making space to let the Word come and take root in our hearts. *** Part of tending our gardens to flourish in faith is to learn how to hear and how to see. …Cleaning the wax out of our ears and the gunk out of our eyes. …Being brave enough to admit it when we need to go and pick up a hearing aide or a new set of glasses! Not being too proud for these things *** What for you is the water, the sunlight, the nutrients that causes your faith life to grow? Is it reading the Bible-alone or with others? Or books on spirituality? Is it music? Is it the beauty of nature? Or the calm assurance of walking into a house of prayer. Do you talk about your faith with a close friend, or with your family? Is your faith found to grow in correctness, neatness, or in messiness? Beware that religion is not always the best gardener. Religion is not one and the same with a spiritual life. It is only a facilitator. What happens within it is what matters. Religion at its worst is like the over-zealous cults of the world, which really are not interested in faith but in control. They do not nurture but force. Jesus’ harshest words were against such hubris in the religious authorities of his day! His way is different. He scatters seed with abandon, and sees it turn to fruit among the often marginalized people who happen to be ready to hear the Word he brought. When we become the fertile ground, ready to receive the Word scattered upon our hearts, we grow just like a flower grows from a seed. And like a flower, we become bearers of the image of God. – Amen.
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