Unexpected Results

We huff and puff because of the profligacy of the action; the grain thrown everywhere, and not always in the most likely of places, soil that appears to be fertile, but just everywhere.

Of course it makes me think of a sermon that gets spoken all around this room.

Some hear and receive it; some hear and reject it.

Sometimes we are distracted by worries inside, or by children, or the heat, or other things.

Sometimes our hearts are not ready to receive, nor our minds to concentrate.

That's just the way it is.

But God has called me to preach anyway, and he will take care of the result.

Two stories today: a Bible story and a pastor's story.

Let's remember for a moment the conversion of Paul.

He had been a great persecutor of the church, and he is on his way to Damascus to wreak more terror on the little band of Christians there.

He is struck blind while on the road, and his companions have to lead him into town.

And then the attention shifts to another person, Ananias, whom God directs to go and welcome this Paul into the faith, because he has plans for this man.

We can understand hesitancy, reluctance, and fear on the part of Ananias.

This is about the least likely person for me to reach with Good News; he has been making murderous trouble for us all, and his reputation precedes him.

Go!

And Ananias goes, and addresses him not as Church Enemy Number One, but as “Brother Saul.,” and ministers to him.

Saul's sight is restored, he is able to eat, and gets a name-change to Paul as a signal of his change in status.

He becomes the sent-out one, the apostle to the Gentiles.

And Ananias? He goes back to whatever his other jobs were, and scripture has no more information about him.

But we have this one incident, this one key time when he did what God needed at this crucial time, and the unlikely became the dramatically certain.

Hurray for Ananias!

And of course, even more...hurray for God, who chooses to work in this way.

And now a pastor story.

A pastor went back to a parish he had served many years before for a visit, and as folks are wont to do, a woman asked him, “Remember me?”

It was 20 years later, but after some prompting, he did remember her...

as a skinny little kid of confirmation age.

It was a rainy, miserable day, and the pastor was waiting for kids to show up for class.

The only one who came was Jane, whose grandmother dropped her off and sped away.

“No, we're not going to have class for only one student; let's go visit some of the older members,” the pastor said.

Jane tagged along dutifully, hardly speaking all afternoon.

“I just want you to know,” said Jane, now standing in front of the pastor as a grown-up woman, “that I am in social work.

You are the reason.

That afternoon you were good enough to take me around with you visiting people, that was when I came to know what God wanted me to do with my life.”

And the pastor suddenly had an insight into this story of sowing seed in unlikely places.

Even when he had been so annoyed to have to worry about the skinny kid so many years before, God was using his time and efforts in ways that he could not anticipate.

Over the years I have gotten cards or notes from time to time from persons who express gratitude for all that I have done for and with them.

Often I am a bit embarrassed when I can't think what I did that made such a profound impression on someone.

God evidently is using a bunch of ordinary actions and my bumbling words to good effect.

There is a harvest, but not of my own devising.

The whole situation is so different from the way in which the rest of the world measures things.

Success and failure may not be discerned in quite the same way.

We may be fussing and fuming about the economic situation, but still, in comparison with much of the world, we are in a relatively easy place.

It would seem to be “good soil”.

But the church is not particularly thriving here these days.

Much of the church around the nation is getting grayer and fewer.

But in some places that we would consider difficult conditions, with thorns and stones aplenty, the faith is bearing fruit.

After the 7/4 event a woman came up to me and said that she had someone who wants to talk with me sometime in the next several weeks.

He is from Ethiopia and came to the faith through the Lutheran church there.

And we know that has not been an easy path to take; last year we heard Pastor Gamechis Bubba, at that time on the ELCA staff, and now director of missions in the NALC, as he described the torture he and his family and so many, many others endured at the hands of the Marxist government.

And the church there continues to grow.

The snapdragons in our window boxes on the south side of the Parish House are most generous in dispensing seed.

Last year we were astounded to watch a beautiful snapdragon grow and flower in a crack underneath a storm grating.

How could there be enough soil for it to survive in that awkward, unlikely place? But it did.

Mention the word “evangelism” and what comes to mind for many is two earnest young men in white shirts having doors shut in their faces for 2 years.

But evangelism is much more than that.

Truly, it is our daily living and breathing in the faith as we interact with others.

Someone asked a group of persons new to a congregation, “How did you become a Christian?”

How seemingly small and insignificant are the ways of God!

The stories these new members told the questioner were quite mundane and unspectacular,

--one person told about a comment that one of her friends made to her while grocery shopping.

--another person reported that the turning point for him was a snippet from a discussion they were watching on the TV.

--unglamorous events, no blinding lights reported, no booming voices from on high... just people living and interacting with friends and neighbors.

Maybe this is the way, this broadcasting the seed so broadly, is the way that God intends to be working among us.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.