But we choose how to respond. We might choose to offer certain acts and behaviors that have been part of tradition for centuries or more; we might choose other traditions from other places, or other ways that are more unique to us. We choose whether to show up to corporate worship or whether to come at all. But the initiative is with God, not us, in this relationship. We’re just responding. So our Sunday worship is the way we respond to God, responding in a particular way, body and soul, in community together – in the way of the Episcopal traditions we are part of.

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We’re used to stories of the disciples acting this way, shoving people aside and barring their way to Jesus. They do this with children, they do this with the hungry, they do this with people who are trying to act in Jesus’ name without joining their group – like many of us Christians continue to do today, to be honest. In every one of those cases Jesus rebukes the disciples and welcomes the ones trying to come to him. But in this story, he doesn’t. Jesus refuses to engage with this woman. He calls her a dog. Until finally she persuades him, and then he embraces her.

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The gift of stories like these truly comes when we hold them up next to our own life stories. We might be tempted to put saints and Bible characters into a whole ‘nother category from us. Their lives are utterly different from ours, more spectacular than our mundane stories – so we think they have no real meaning for us. We haven’t been sold into slavery, or tried to walk on water, or been invaded by armies. But we have our own struggles, large and small – our own circumstances as different as these stories are different from one another.

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It’s a dialogue we see repeated many times in scripture. In nearly every great story of God calling someone to do a big thing – from the patriarchs Abraham and Moses to the prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah to Mary the mother of God herself, the pattern goes something like this: God says, ‘I want you to do something for me.’ The human says, ‘I can’t, and let me explain why, since you, God, clearly don’t understand the situation.’ I’m too young; I’m too old; I’m not good at public speaking; I’m not even married; there’s not enough to go around. I’m too broken to help. I’m not enough. Please, go ask someone else.

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We can see why Jesus prefers to teach in parable, by storytelling, rather than just jumping to the final conclusion.  The parables themselves are understood by the listeners at Jesus time on a deeper level than just intellectual.  These are people who have lived the time it takes for dough to rise and trees to grow - with these stories, Jesus uses common language to bring to mind the embodied experience of time passing and quietly miraculous growth just happening along with it.

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It’s another time when Jesus explains his own parable in a very straightforward, allegorical way. Just as I did last week, I’m protesting that again. Because there’s an obvious temptation as we listen to this interpretation: if there are children of the kingdom and there are children of the evil one, we might find ourselves feeling pretty sure we know which is which. The bad seed people, well, they’re obvious, right? They’re the ones we disagree with, of course. They’re the ones who cause the problems and commit the crimes. They’re the ones who don’t pull their weight in society or in our community. They’re the ones who took my parking place. Whoever they are, we’re pretty sure we can spot them. Because of course, we must be the good seeds, not them. So them, we can go ahead and judge, because they’re so clearly not us.

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So what if we back up before the explanation and focus our attention on the sower in this story, rather than the soil – the sower who goes out to sow. It’s an image that is easy to understand. We don’t even have to be gardeners to get this one. Maybe because of this very parable, the metaphor of planting seeds makes intuitive sense. Seeds take time to sprout and grow – not everything we do bears fruit right away. We know that in our lives, just like we know that in our gardens. Parenting, growing a business, developing a relationship, all take time. Immediate success is unlikely with things that really matter.

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The thing is, these burdens don’t always start out being burdens – we’re trying to do a good job at life, in work, in parenting, in social interactions, so we set expectations and put things on our calendars and then wind up with too much to do. We try to be informed, responsible citizens and then get backed into pockets of outrage online. Our efforts to be healthy lead us into hypochondria and anti-aging treatments and ‘maxxing,’ as if we could control it all. 

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Opening our home or our dinner table to another is a way of allowing others into our lives. Come in, we say – make yourself at home here. We literally drop the walls so that others can come in; we let go of our own control as we move in another’s space. And hospitality can extend beyond human interactions too: opening our hearts and souls to God is also hospitality, allowing God to come in and make himself at home. And we receive hospitality from God as well, making our home in God, trusting the welcome that is there. There’s a vulnerability in all of this, a willingness to give and to receive without worrying about the balance sheet.

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Here’s the pattern we see in scripture – and in the lives of all the saints. God is faithful. God chooses us from the beginning of time, calls us sacred and holy, a people made for God. God leads us out of the bondage in which we find ourselves – the entanglements we get ourselves into, the limitations set upon us by the world we live in – and God carries us through the wilderness of transformation, creating us anew. We have moments when we see and grasp the love God is giving to us, and we respond in love. Good things happen.

 And yet things go south, repeatedly.

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The narrative makes it sound so abrupt and final, like Matthew is leaving that world for good. And yet after this seemingly radical departure, Jesus and Matthew and the disciples sit down for dinner, and gathered all around them are…tax-collectors and sinners. All these other folks involved in the wrong lines of work, these fellow members of Matthew’s old corrupt community now gathered around this same person who said only, Follow me. Did Matthew bring them along, acting as a kind of apostle to the wrong sort of people? Did Jesus go out and gather them too, all of them jumping up from their tables and leaving everything behind? However it happens, Matthew and all those sinners and Jesus are all part of the party together.

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With Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are given a direct path to finding meaning for even our deepest, darkest pain — not because it makes it go away.  But instead because it shows us that we are not alone in it.  That we can live past it.  No, this pain does not mean God has abandoned me even when it feels that way.  He felt that way too, and it still wasn’t the end.

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The disciples did what made sense to them in their uncertainty, hanging out in their clubhouse, the upper room where Jesus had been with them, praying and sticking together. They could have stayed there and been safe and lived out their days. But the Holy Spirit came and blew them out of there, gave them different languages to speak and different missions and sent them out, some going here, some going there, most of them, it seems, heading off to places they’d never been before. Out to danger and difficulty and, for many of them, martyrdom, suffering and death. No more status quo. No going back to the life they had before Jesus came along. 

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Because of course the disciples back then didn’t really get it. It’s not everyday stuff to have your beloved friend and teacher appear before you when you saw him dead just a few days before; it’s not everyday to have him disappear from your sight just when you’d got used to having him around again. It’s no wonder that the disciples were confused, standing there gaping upwards with no idea what to do next. All the explanation in the world, all the careful teaching and preaching Jesus did with them, could not prepare them for this. No more than it does for us, even though we have the benefit of time and tradition and overfamiliarity to help us get used to it all. What in the world does this mean? there he went – what are we supposed to do now?

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Maybe the first question of evangelism for us is an even deeper one: perhaps it requires us first to ask ourselves, what feeds me? what makes me come alive? what is it that is of utmost importance to me? To preach the good news to others in whatever way we are called to do it, we need to know the good news ourselves. When we are grounded in God’s love and spiritually alive, we can’t help but show it – the joy, the peace, the fruits of the Spirit are evident. Evangelism is, then, about finding deepest nourishment for ourselves, and showing others what we have found.

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But when Thomas asks Jesus more about this, how do we get there, exactly? Jesus sounds a little less comforting. You know how, he says. I am the Way there. The Way, the Truth, and the Life. Not so much the Home where you can hunker down and hide from the world, but the Way. Not the thing that makes you feel safe, but the Truth. And I’m calling you ever onward into life, to follow me.

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After the pandemic, students shared how they longed for a space to eat and rest, and that hospitality is why we were welcomed onto UC San Diego 18 months ago to partner with interfaith organizations in the Center for Ethics and Spirituality.  Not long after we started, a student brought a friend who said, "Oh you're the Nice People with Free Pizza!”  Our space was important to one student who brought another because that student was important to the first.  To that point, in December, St. Francis donated a gift to Agape that pays for this hospitality at SDSU for this entire year.  Thank you.

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In worship together every Sunday, we follow this same pattern: we gather, we hear and talk about scripture, we share the meal, and we are sent back into the world. And what we hope is that what happens to these disciples on the road happens here as well: that in what we do together, we meet the risen Christ, our hearts burn within us, and we hurry out to share the good news of God’s work in the world. Right?

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How often have you felt this same hopeless frustration with yourself? With your own doubt?

Your own fear? Whatever that rankling, thorny bush you find yourself caught in when you

consider God, whatever that is for you?

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So the same question that sought us out on Good Friday seeks us out today. Whom are you looking for? What do you seek? We’re drawn here on Easter morning, looking for joy, love, light. Each of us longs for something to connect to outside of ourselves. But we might not yet see that Jesus, the challenging, self-giving Jesus of the gospel stories, is what we’re looking for.

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