Our back yard is a thorny thicket. Other people have manicured lawns, with friendly plants laid out in neat rows. But our back yard is a tangled thorny thicket.
Along one fence there are blackberries, growing in long canes that have to be tied up lest they wander into the next county. They are allegedly thornless blackberries. They are not. They have thorns that tangle tightly in twists. That yard is a thorny thicket, I say.
And in front of the blackberries, raspberries. Who knew that such sweet succulent fruit would be protected with needles that get into the skin and will not come out? Thorny thicket.
And don’t even get me started on the rose bushes that reach out and aim at my arms, my legs, my jacket, intent on impaling me! A rose by any other name may smell just as sweet, but those thorns are not sweet at all. Thorny thicket. Everywhere in my back yard.
At least we finally conquered the pyracantha that built its fortress in a corner and would not let us even get close. It took months of struggle and the shedding of much blood, but we did whip that one and removed it from our tangled jungle excuse for a yard. And all at some cost to these hands. When you go to play the piano and find that it’s painful because of the thicket thorns in the thumb, you know you have paid a price. And not only to these hands, but also to my legs. The jeans have not yet been made that are strong enough to repel pyracantha thorns with a mind of their own. Hands and legs and face and back – all bear witness to the struggle with the thorny thicket. It’s tough out there.
Jesus must have known that. I expect that He had had to press His way through some unpleasant places in His journeys. And so He knew exactly what He was talking about when He spoke of how God’s word sometimes falls among thorns and takes hold, for a while, but eventually is choked out. Jesus must have felt the tear of the thorns on His hands and His legs and the pull of the thicket on His sleeves. And He made sure we would understand what we face when we try to make a difference in such a world.
For this world is a thorny thicket. Much of what we do will fall among thorns and take hold for a while, but it will be choked out. Much of what we try to implant in others will take hold among the tangles, but will not survive. But I submit to you that working in the thorny thicket will be worth it. I submit to you that the thorny thicket is exactly where Jesus lived, and exactly where you and I are called to live. Not in the comfort of daffodils and daisies, but in the thorny thicket. Not in the lush green meadows among the pansies and petunias, row on row, but in the thorny thicket, where life is tangled, where people struggle with issues, where nothing is simple, where spirits hurt. That is where He is and that is where He calls us to be.
Jesus describes this thorny thicket world in which so many live, and it would pay us this morning to listen to His description. He will teach us about this harsh reality to which we are called. No illusions here; many of this world’s people live lives of pain and anguish, and there are distinct reasons why they do. Distinct reasons why people live in thorny thickets and tangled messes.
I
a
For one thing, there is what Jesus calls, “The cares of this world.” Hosts of people live in anxiety about merely sustaining themselves. Jobs ... bills … health … family … self-esteem … all sorts of things that people must deal with in order to survive, caught up in the cares of this world.
Those of us who live in middle-class satisfaction may never fully understand what it is to be in constant struggle just to keep a roof over your head and food on your table, not to mention all the other issues that pile up when you are poor. I have worked at one job or another for fifty-four years, since I was sixteen years old, and was unemployed for a whopping four months after my alleged retirement in 2004! What do I know about joblessness? What do I really understand about fearing starvation or worrying about my home? Not much!
So where do I get the right to say to somebody, “Just have faith, the Lord will provide”? How can I with a straight face tell a homeless man, “Something will turn up, just get out there and look for it.” I know that the antidote to anxiety is always faith; but do I teach faith by bombarding someone with admonitions to have faith? Or do I get him to a place of faith by laboring alongside him to solve these thorny issues? Do I teach her to trust in the Lord with all her heart and lean not to her own understanding by popping Gospel pills down her throat, or do I get my hands dirty building her house, teaching her a skill, making sure her children are clothed? I am confident we know the answer to that.
We Christians have the cure for the cares of this world. It is God’s word, yes; but when that word falls among thorns and is choked, we have more than words to offer. We have active love. We have hands to go to work.
b
But there is something else. In addition to the “cares of this world”, Jesus cites the “lure of wealth”. We tangle up our lives by becoming enmeshed in the relentless pursuit of more. We do not know when enough is enough. The bills from over-indulgence at Christmas have by now shown up in our mailboxes, and the lure of wealth is eating at us. It is eating at the world of the thorny thicket too.
Let the stock market tumble a hundred points or so, and investors get upset. Let the price of oil climb a few more dollars per barrel and some will scream at what it costs to fuel their Hummers. But the lure of wealth is not limited to those of us who are doing all right. The lure of wealth sings its siren song to the poor and to the desperate. The lure of wealth brings people to this country illegally, with aspirations to help their families and to establish themselves in luxury. The lure of wealth even tempts some into “prosperity Gospel” churches, where thousands listen to grinning gurus promising them untold riches and smug satisfaction. The lure of wealth is a thorny thicket into which hopeless, desperate people are drawn, and it will hurt. It will hurt deeply.
We Christians have the cure for the lure of wealth. It is God’s word, yes; but when that word falls among thorns and is choked, we have more than words to offer. We have generous hearts. We have models of compassion. And we have hands to go to work.
c
What, again, does Jesus say about the word of God falling among the thorns? God’s truth is choked out by the cares of this world,[by] the lure of wealth, and [by] the desire for other things. “The desire for other things” Distractions. Majoring on the minors. Letting good things become the enemy of the best. Settling for less than what God really wants to give us. The relentless pursuit of temporary fixes and fruitless pleasures, when all along there is something more that we are overlooking.
I have listened to many of you talk about how busy you are and how much energy you put into doing things for your family. If it is not the school, it is athletics. If it is not music lessons, it is scouts. If it is not arts and crafts, it is language immersion. On and on, and all good things. But don’t you wonder sometimes if we are wearing ourselves down and expending our energies on so many good things that we are missing the one best thing, the thing that is critical? Like letting a child just be a child, free to wander and wonder? Like letting our young ones find their own way without so much coaching?
Do not hear me criticizing; just hear a concern. The thorny thicket in which we live is filled with so many distractions that God’s way, God’s truth, is obscured. What Jesus called “the desire for other things” is our insecurity, our frantic struggle to be sure we are somebodies.
We Christians have the cure for this overwhelming desire and distraction. It is God’s word, yes; but when that word falls among thorns and is choked, we have more than words to offer. We have discipline. We have purpose. And we have hands to go to work.
So – review with me now. I have said that this world is, for many people, a thorny thicket, a difficult and even tortured place where all that God wants for us gets choked out because of the cares of this world – that’s anxiety about survival; because of the lure of wealth – that’s the temptation to focus on big money fast; and because of the desire for other things – that’s the distraction of too much, too soon, so that we cannot sort out what is of first importance. That is our thorny thicket, and that is where a host of people live in our time.
II
Martin Luther King, Jr., was a student at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania in the late 40’s and early 50’s. He came from a very traditional church background and anticipated that he would prepare for a ministry of preaching and shepherding, as countless other pastors had done. Everyone knew that he would one day walk into the pulpit at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church behind both his father and his grandfather, and he would be prominent and successful.
But at the seminary this young preacher began to read deeply and study carefully. In a fascinating letter to his mother, he apologized for not having any news to share because, he said, he visited no one but his books! King read, there at the seminary, Walter Rauschenbusch’s Christianity and the Social Crisis. Rauschenbusch was one of the towering intellects of Baptist Christianity, arguing that unless and until we deal with the whole human situation, with politics and economics and all the rest, we have done nothing. Unless we stop blaming victims for their oppression, no redemption will happen.
And so a dream was born. A new way of thinking emerged. I had the opportunity this week to look on line at some of Dr. King’s papers. In the margins of one of his textbooks, he wrote, “I am disappointed in the church. I am not disappointed in Christ.” He worried about the Christian church and its distance from the places where people hurt. So King would write later, about his seminary discoveries, that “any religion that professes concern for the souls of men and is not equally concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried.”
Martin Luther King saw that his ministry would not be behind the stained glass windows of the church, but out on the streets, where people hurt; out in the thorny thicket, where hearts are broken. As George McLeod put it, King saw that “Christ was crucified not in a cathedral between two candles but on a town garbage heap between two thieves”.
So today we honor Dr. King and his dream, the dream that would take him to the buses of Montgomery and the Pettus Bridge toward Selma; a dream that would fire his imagination and bring him to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. We honor Martin Luther King, Christian statesman, Baptist pastor, a man who made a difference, a man who understood the thorny thicket in which countless of God’s children live, a man who died with his dream intact. For Dr. King had a dream that one day all of God’s children would live together in peace, that one day all would be free, and, yes, that all would know the fullness of God’s intention for them. Dr. King lived and died in the thorny thicket of this world, but his dream does not die.
III
I wonder, today, if we have dreamed a worthy dream about this thorny thicket. I wonder, today, if Dr. King’s dream, nay, Jesus’ dream, is alive and well in this church. I wonder.
I wonder, for in my short tenure here I have seen some evidence that we do want to make a difference with those who hurt. I am pleased that we are doing some things that help others. And yet, I am not sure I see a church-wide passion about that. I am not confident that I see energy and the commitment of time and money for the needs of those caught up in the cares of this world. Do we have a dream that deals with homelessness? Do we have a dream that picks up on joblessness? Where are we about the men who gather every morning only a few blocks from here, trying to get a day’s work? Does it matter more that they are hungry and helpless, or that some of them have come here outside the law? I am not advocating lawlessness; but I am wondering about the dream. The cares of this world are a thorny thicket that someone needs to cut through.
I wonder whether we have a dream that pulls people back from the lure of wealth. I wonder whether we have a dream that helps men and women, whatever their station in life, know the joy of giving? The statistics I read about the life of this church suggest that only twenty families give more than forty percent of the church’s support, and that nearly two hundred families give only pennies for the work of Christ. We could shout blame on them, but likely they are not present today. We could pound the pulpit and scream at them, but probably they cannot hear. They – we – cannot hear about the joy of giving because we are lured by the siren song of wealth. And when our hearts are hardened against those who have not, because we want to enjoy what we have, even though the Bible tells us it is God who gives us the power to gain wealth – when we do that, we consign our church, our brothers and sisters, and ourselves all to the thorny thicket from which there is no easy escape. The lure of wealth.
All I can do is to repeat the clear and prominent warning of the Bible, that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.” No thornier a thicket is there than the one made up of bank statements and investment slips! Is there a dream, in this church, to arrive at the day when the debt is paid, when the building is open for all sorts of needs, and when the people of God manage their resources so wisely that giving becomes a joy and sharing becomes as natural as breathing? Is there a dream today?
I know very little about this community, having lived for many years way down the road. All I can really do is drive in and drive out. But I have seen some things. I have seen apartment buildings filled with immigrants, some of them struggling, lonely, afraid, and lost. Where is our dream for them?
I have seen at the same time wonderful homes, beautiful houses, families with two cars, three children, four dogs, and uncountable debts. Where is the dream to guide them out of the debt thicket?
I see schools with all the educational media money can buy, teachers with splendid skills, but children from single parent homes or raised by grandparents, children who seem to be on their own much of the time. Where is the dream to care for the least of these?
I raise questions that I cannot answer. In fact I raise questions that because of my status as interim pastor I can do very little to respond to. But I believe with all my heart that these are the right questions, these are the church’s issues, these are the thorns that must be dealt with before we will move forward. The intent of our God is that we will do justice and love mercy as well as walk with Him. The dream of a man like King is that the church of the Lord Jesus will involve itself in every human need, without exception. And the hope for the future of the First Baptist Church of Gaithersburg is that a vision of ministry be cast to penetrate the thorny thickets of anxiety, despair, and distraction.
Will it cost? Yes, it will. It will cost time, talent, treasure, and truth. Will it hurt? Yes, it will. It always costs something to serve the last, the least, the lost, and the lonely.
But when I look at my hands and consider the tiny little scratches I get when tending my thorny thicket, I recognize that they are nothing over against the torn and bleeding hands of Christ.
When I grumble about the thorns that pick at my clothes and hold back my progress, I remember that they are nothing when compared with the seamless robe of Christ, stripped from His wounded body.
When I lift my feet out of the brambles and find that there are pin-pricks when I walk, all I need to do is to lift my eyes to the Cross and see great nails through His feet. It cost Him dearly to walk into my thorny thicket.
How dare I complain? How dare I focus on a little discomfort? How dare I not sacrifice my wants for others’ needs and for the church’s life? How dare I not dream the dream and pay the price? How dare we not be the church, offering time and talent, treasure and truth, here in this thorny thicket?
For that is where He is and that is where He calls us to be. Bloody hands or scarred feet, that is where He is and where He calls us to be, in this thorny thicket.
