Driving down an ordinary country road past ordinary little farm houses, your eyes adjust to something so extraordinary, that those same eyes almost disbelieve. There, shimmering in the morning mist, is a church, so supernaturally beautiful that it appears to be descending to earth.
In the beginning of Romans, Chapter 1, Paul makes a rather remarkable statement after his notorious inventory of the world’s moral chaos — envy, murder, strife, deceit, gossip, idolatry, sexual perversion. Why this bad behavior? Although any of these might be given as reasons for moral malaise, Paul gives none of them. Rather Paul says, people gave glory to the world, and to human creations, that they ought give only to God.
Matthew's gospel sometimes is bad news before it's good news. Every time I visit Matthew’s church, I check my watch.
Now I really believe the gospel is good news—that even the hardest sayings, like this morning's parable, we meant for Good News. That hard words nevertheless carry Jesus' life in them, speaking a truth I need to hear. In the case of this morning’s parable, here’s how I heard good news.
At times we all love to discount mystery. Or maybe I should say I do. It’s great to have an explanation for something in the midst of wide eyed onlookers. Often, or at least my family tells it, I provide explanations to questions no one, has asked.
You see it’s hard to control a mystery and why bother, when you can search Google or wolfram alpha and get a formula or better yet an answer? We depend upon Consumer surveys, check the bar code on our smart phones to see if it’s cheaper somewhere use. We all tend to look at our world through narrow eyelids. We love to discern from a distance and not get taken in, either by God, the bible, the church, half truth or cure alls; not if we can help it.
