You know, I just don’t have the patience for complex thinking these days. 

Last week, I accidentally scheduled myself for 20+ hours of orientation on top of my typical work, three evening church meetings, four piano lessons, and a trip to see my parents (outside, from a distance). This was not good planning.  This was not wise decision making.  I didn’t mean to have so many things in one week.  It just happened.  

But my brain’s not all there all the time.  Yours probably isn’t either.  Feeling like you have a short fuse?  Too sad to get off the couch some days?  Forgetting to go outside and go on a walk?

Normal, normal, normal.  

Or, if we want to use the words of Paul from the book of Romans, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

Listen, if you’ve had a really good week, I want to celebrate that too.  Perhaps you didn’t open the freezer multiple times, hoping for more ice cream sandwiches to appear even after you ate them all.  But I did.  So I’m not really sure why Proverbs, a wisdom book, is where I want to be right now, even though yes, I did pick it to preach on myself.  

For a moment, I thought I had picked Proverbs because of their brevity.   Like my mindless scrolling, distilling information to tweets, short graphics, Proverbs are short and sweet.  That lines up with where I am.  

But perhaps just like all that news and information I consume online, Proverbs, too, get more complicated as you go.  Because these nice little digestible nuggets of wisdom, as it turns out, they contradict themselves. And not just a little bit, but a lot. 

So if you’re turning to Proverbs for easy answers, for a quick fix of wisdom, for the biblical equivalent of a freezer stocked with ice cream sandwiches, you’re out of luck.  

And I just don’t have patience for complex thinking these days.  

Just listen to this.  Proverbs 10:4, “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.”  But then there’s this one, “A poor man’s field may produce abundant food, but injustice sweeps it away.”  Proverbs 13:23.  Those things don’t really make sense together.  

And then there’s just the somewhat nonsensical.  “He who winks with his eye is plotting perversity; he who pursues his lips is bent on evil.”  Proverbs 16:30.  Lucky for you, I can’t wink.  

Plus, there are some that I’m pretty sure my parents wrote.  “Children’s children are a crown to the aged, and parents are the pride of their children.” That’s in 17:6.  

Don’t get me wrong, I was pleased to find this one earlier this week, especially after I just finished patching up a wall in our bathroom.  Proverbs 14:1, “The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.”

I also like this one, “Stay away from a foolish man, for you will not find knowledge on his lips.” Proverbs 14:7--good thing I’m not a man, right? 

Pick your proverb, there are plenty.  But good luck making sense of them.  

Despite my inability to grasp much these days, I actually suspect that might put me exactly in the right posture to understand the book of Proverbs.  Because is wisdom really swallowing bunches of information and then tweeting it out to anyone who will hear?  Or is it sitting in this midst of confusion and learning to be okay with that?

I did a little refresher course this week on Zen Koans, and hear me, I’m not an expert.  But we can learn something about how Zen Buddhists approach these little sayings, questions that are meant to draw you into deep learning. You’ve heard a few before even if you don’t realize it.  One of the most famous is just this: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”  

Good luck answering that today.  

But the point of these Koans isn’t just to immediately come up with the answer.  It’s to dwell in the not knowing, to expand your thinking.  To go beyond binaries.  I think we can learn something important from that.  

I think we can approach Proverbs with some of that Spirit.  Our traditional response to scripture readings, not just Proverbs, is “hear what the Spirit is saying to us today.”  It’s not, “Dear God, help us pass the quiz at the end of this sermon.”  Although just let me know if you want some sermon quizzes.  I’d be happy to give you all extra credit.  

How can we hear what the Spirit is saying to us today?  How can we hear when we are exhausted?  How can we make sense of contradictory sayings?  What do we do when even these short little snippets of scripture contain more than what we can easily understand?  

Good luck answering that today.  

If you were an A-student, if you hated school, if you like reading the bible, if you want to know all the answers, if you feel someone is going to figure out soon that you don’t know all the answers, my encouragement to you is the same. 

Let’s get comfortable with being uncomfortable.  Let’s learn from the contradiction.  I encourage you to sit in the spaces where you are aware and open to the fact that you have no idea what is going on.  Because that’s where we start to learn.  

Or, as Proverbs 12:1 says, “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid.”  

I’m ready to be corrected.  Because no where in the past few weeks did God send me a message that said, work sixty hours this week, agonize about when a vaccine will be ready, and solve the complexities of the Proverbs, please and thank you.  That’s not how God speaks to me.  I’d be surprised if God speaks to you that way either.  

Instead, I heard God through friends who reminded me to rest.  I felt God through the cool air, a breeze of grace coming from the freezer, as I opened it for the fourteenth time.  I knew God through the words in Proverbs, not as a solution, but an affirmation that wisdom takes time, patience, and a willingness to embrace contradiction.  

Proverbs are just as good for the questions they give us as they are for the answers.  I could say the same about our whole faith, too.  

Thanks be to our God, of Proverbs, of wisdom, and of ongoing questioning and learning.  Amen. 

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what should we do?’ Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.’ And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.’ So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Acts 2:37-47

Look back and repent from your past.

Be baptized to represent your commitment for the present.

And you will receive the Holy Spirit into the future.

This is the simple and yet revolutionary foundation for the Church.  We haven’t moved on yet, to not forget what happens to this diverse group that the Spirit called together on Pentecost.  

We know that the early church was specifically called to be diverse because of what we learned last week.  All those different languages, all those different places represented.  They don’t go away after Pentecost.  The early church is defined by its unique makeup of different people, from different places, races, classes, genders, and more.  Paul later wouldn’t have had to write to the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” if the church wasn’t struggling to be a united community when there was both Jew and Gentile present.  Both slave and free.  Both male and female.  

The forces around them didn’t want the Church to be this way.  It’s easier and simpler to have uniformity and unanimity.  The Roman Empire certainly wanted the rich to stay in their place, for unbalanced systems of slavery and subjugation to remain.  To form a truly diverse community was as difficult then as it is today.

Because don’t you know, it’s extraordinarily difficult to maintain difference.  Churches are an extraordinarily segregated place.  Schools dependent on property taxes form stark lines between us and them.  Most White people can’t name even a single Black friend. 

And of course, diversity on it’s own doesn’t really solve the problems of the world anyway.  We know this from the inadequacy that comes from the lips of White folk like myself when we excuse away deep racism by saying things like, “But I have Black friends/family/neighbors.”  Simply being in proximity to people who are unlike us does not form a just world.

But it’s a place to start.  

And we cannot forget that it is where the Church started.  After the experience of Pentecost, after hearing Peter’s sermon found earlier in Acts 2, the group gathered had a very important question.  What are we to do now?  What are we to do because we don’t know what to do with this new community, this new Church, this body of Christ that is not just a reflection of one people or place.

Peter, with a directness that should give us great comfort, told them.

Repent.  Be baptized.  And receive the Holy Spirit.

Two thousand years later our orders have not changed.  

We are still called to look back and repent, to turn more toward God.

To put it in the context of what I have witnessed this week, this is a particularly important step for White people like myself to not skip over.  If confronted by racism, if called out on racist behaviors and tendencies, if there is recognition that something we have done is not correct, how do we respond?  With repentance.  Not with that phrase that is so easy to roll off our tongues, “But I’m not a racist,” but instead with repentance, with “I’m sorry.  How can I change?  How can I help?”  

When we are willing to repent, willing to feel embarrassment and say we’re sorry, it helps maintain the bonds between us, even when it is difficult.  

We are also still called to be baptized.  Now, this is a direct and simple call, if you haven’t and want to be baptized, call me up.  But also, baptism and remembering our baptism is simple a way of stating our commitment to the cause.  Baptism is about placing ourselves under the authority of our Trinitarian God and seeking to be blessed and brought into a new community, a new family.  So even if you’ve already been baptized, you can still affirm your baptismal commitment.

And we are called to receive the Spirit.  This is maybe the most difficult of the three tasks Peter placed before the early church and us today.  Because the Spirit leads us into places that we do not want to go.  This little moment in Acts might trick us into thinking that following the Spirit leads us into peace and sitting together and singing kum by yah.  Because it does look like this for a moment at the end of Acts 2.  And yet, from here on out, the story goes on to be about conflict between people, the displeasure of the Roman Empire with this new Church, and how difficult it is to maintain this group for both Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, male and female.

We should not ignore how difficult it will be for us too.  

Repent.  Be baptized.  Receive the Spirit.  

We look to the witness of the early church to give us courage to face what we are called to today.  We must repent and do the work of digging up the deep and ugly sin of racism.  We must repent when we hurt one another, even inadvertently.  We must be baptized and commit ourselves to a new family in Christ.  Joining the Church might mean a betrayal of the roles and communities we have inhabited before.  It’s difficult to be a citizen in the Kindom of God and also pledge allegiance to anyone else.  We must continue to receive the Spirit for ongoing guidance.  Wherever we are going, we need God with us. 

Convicted by the Spirit and the words from Peter, the still-forming Church asked, “What shall we do?” 

Do we have the courage to ask and hear the answers once again? 

“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents,[f] to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Matthew 25:14-30

**Tip for reading this parable.  This can be a challenging story to read (what about that poor man with only one talent?!)  Our bible study group discovered this week how helpful it was to read the parables and stories surrounding this one in the gospel of Matthew.  If you have time, read all of Matthew 24, 25, and 26 and see if that helps add some perspective.  

No choir, no kids, no coffee hour.  We must not have much.  Just me, Roland, and Josh.  It’s like we were given one talent--that’s it.  It wouldn’t be a stretch to see ourselves in this way right now, like we don’t have much to offer.  We’re just a small church.  Only a few people.  So we’d better save what we have, hole up, and hope for the best.

When asking where people see themselves in this story, it is most common to recognize yourself in the person who was only given one talent.  Many of us feel sympathetic to this person who just wanted to save, it seemed.  And yet they were dealt with so harshly.  How could this be, that the one who had so little was then left with nothing at all?  We feel that deeply, because we understand ourselves in that underdog position.  

And I certainly have sympathy and many feelings about this one-talent-person.  But I’m more interested in why we often see ourselves as the one burying our money in the backyard instead understanding ourselves as the one with abundance and responsibility. 

It reminds me of a study done by Ameriprise Financial that led to this provocative headline, “Only 13% of millionaires think they’re rich.”  As it turns out, there’s no magic number that makes folks believe they’re wealthy.  Location, upbringing, and always being able to see someone who has more than you--well these things make for a lot of folks with a lot of money believing they’re solidly middle class.  

We don’t tend to do a good job of evaluating the gifts and the wealth we have.  Perhaps none of you are millionaires, but how do you assess what you have?  Do you think you have five talents?  Two?  Or just one?  By what metric?  

Josh was telling me a story recently about canned potatoes.  I saw them being used to great effect on a cooking show and Josh’s testimony was that yes, canned potatoes can be wonderful.  Because there was this one time when he was growing up when there wasn’t much left in the cupboards.  But Josh’s mom was still able to make this memorable meal from the odds and ends leftover.  For Josh, that memory is of the best, crispy potato wedges.  Out of the corners of the cupboard, right into this memory of being fed, loved, and in awe of moms who can make so much out of so little.  

How many talents do we have?  

Well, I could give you somewhat exact numbers.  We’ve been collecting your information online to plan for our budget next year.  Many of you have submitted pledges of money and time.  And I know that those exact numbers are important--just ask Doris our treasurer. 

But I don’t need to know the exact tally to know that here at South Haven, we have been given five talents.  It’s just our responsibility to recognize that and then take our abundance to create more abundance.  

We have people. We have money. We have space, this building.  We have connections.  

It’s really easy right now to be scared.  I’m scared and worried.  How can we plan for the future?  How can we trust that we have enough?  For many people this brings up the trauma and memories of times when there wasn’t enough.  For many people now there is no work, no health insurance, no food left in the cupboards.  

Which is why I’m grateful that we don’t hear this parable alone.  Maybe if it were just one of us facing the world, I could agree.  There’s just one talent and only one place to put it, in the backyard out of fear and desire to not lose what little is left.

But together, we have more than five talents.  And with that comes the responsibility to pay attention, to participate in the world that God is preparing.  Together, we are able to not only feed people in our community, but start to ask why are they hungry in the first place?  We can maintain our building not just so we have a nice place to meet when this is all over, but to provide safe, accessible space for the organizations that will need it most.  We share in worship to glorify God and connect with one another, but also to display and express exactly what a fully open and affirming congregation looks like and believes.  

This is what I want to consecrate today.  I want to consecrate our five talents to become five more.  By the grace of God, might it be so. 

If you invoke as Parent the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through Christ you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.

Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

1 Peter 1:17-23

Why would you plant trees in the middle of a pandemic?  

Martin Luther said, "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."  Actually, it probably wasn’t Luther, it was maybe confessing Christians in Nazi Germany.  Which actually might make it a better quote.  “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”

And we still did plant trees this week, even if it was the process of donating money to plant trees elsewhere.  Our denomination, the United Church of Christ, helped facilitate this to celebrate Earth Day this week.  And you still can support planting trees by going to the website, https://www.ucc.org/plantatree.  

I donated to plant trees and I encourage you to do so as well.  But this still doesn’t answer why we would plant trees right now.

Why do something that’s so future oriented, something that takes so long to show results, when everything says, “Now is the crisis.  Now is the problem.  Take care of what is in front of you right now!”

But trees?  That takes longer.  Trees take hope.

My dad has always planted trees in his yard from the Arbor Day foundation.  They would come in the mail and they don’t really look like trees at that point.  They look like sticks.  And he would take these trees/sticks and put them in designated places.  You’d have to ask him for the exact percentage, but these tiny trees weren’t guaranteed success. Deer, for one, love these new snacks.  And disease.  And accidentally running them over with the lawn mower.  

Yet miraculously, a small number of these trees have actually become something I can recognize as a tree.  When I walk around my parent’s yard, I see trees that have taken essentially my entire life to grow.  

Trees take hope for the future.

People take hope for the future.

1 Peter is a complicated book of the bible.  We had a great bible study looking at this passage on Thursday.  (All of you are invited to bible study on Thursdays at 7pm!  We had people from three states.)  Part of what helps our understanding of books like 1 Peter is a community to read along with.  So know that I don’t come up with these ideas on my own, but by listening to you, too.  

One thing we had consensus on, and Geoffrey was very helpful in pointing this out to us, is that this is a scripture that could be abused.  There’s a line in this passage that says, “You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors.”  This has been used incorrectly by those who have thought to spread the message of Christianity by cutting others off from their cultural heritage.  

Which is why we have to read together and find out really what this passage is saying. 

I think of it this way.  And this is totally another example I received from talking about this scripture with Sarah this week. 

How can we go back to ever thinking that paying grocery store workers a “minimum” wage is sufficient?  How can we ever view the folks who clean our hospitals as non-essential and not worth our respect and compensation?  How can we go back to dead end ways of thinking, when Christ has ransomed, redeemed, and pointed out the value of those around us?

These, I think, are the futile ways that we are being called away from.  Just  because we have inherited a system that belittles people and takes their worth from how productive they can be, by how much we can wring out of them, that doesn’t mean we have to keep it.  

1 Peter shows a forward, hopeful way of understanding the world.  There is new birth, a future, a way of being in God that is not a dead end, not futile, not limiting.  There is a future, a hope worth believing in.  

The CEB translation says it this way in verse 23, 

“Do this because you have been given new birth—not from the type of seed that decays but from seed that doesn’t.”

Why plant trees?

Because we believe we, ourselves, our very being has a future in God.  We are redeemable, able to find new life in the future. If you need to hear this about yourself today, know this.  You are beloved and worth more than gold or silver or dollars or cents.  You are ransomed by Christ just as you are.

We also believe others have a future, a hope.  They are redeemable, precious, sacred to God.  We can look around us and not seek to cut people off from what is life-giving to them, but instead offer the courage we know comes from Christ to say no to dead, barren places.  To turn away from what has been unhealthy before.  There is a future to be had in God for all people.   

And not just people, but we believe creation can be redeemed. Little sticks can become trees.  

Through Christ, we believe in the planting of trees, because we have a future filled with hope.  

Thanks be to God, Amen.