Seeds | Proper 10, Time after Pentecost +7 | July 12 2026

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This sermon reflects on the parable of the sower as a story of God's abundant grace, while emphasizing Matthew's challenge to the church to examine the ways fear, distraction, and human weakness can keep that grace from taking root. God's judgment is not condemnation but an expression of steadfast mercy, reminding believers that they answer to God alone and that their lives and faithfulness matter deeply to God. Concluding with the image of unexpected flowers growing among neglected garden paths, the sermon illustrates how God can bring new life and beauty from places we might overlook, nurturing fragile seeds until they are ready to flourish.

Here’s an image of the sower sowing seed…..

An image of grace, of the Kingdom of God, that we love…

Seeds sown heedlessly, here, there and everywhere… 

If my garden is any measure, the sower is sowing dandelion seeds…

That is more like the image of grace Jesus teaches,
grace growing like a weed…

A weed after all, is a seed out of place, something like all that parsnip we see along the roads,  unwanted, invasive, toxic to human flesh….

Not growing where we want it to grow, but wherever the wind of the Spirit carries it.

Which brings us to the Gospel of Matthew, the most challenging Gospel for preachers, to be sure, because it is an insider’s gospel, written with the kind of familiarity of the ways we talk with our own kith and ken.

It relies on relationships like those in our own families,
like those we trust to tell us what we need to hear in ways that others are not allowed to speak to us….

Unlike Paul’s epistle to the Romans, a public letter written to a broad audience when he writes “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” 

Matthew parable of the sower speaks to the first church growing from the soil of grace, unwanted weeds and wanted plants growing together.  

The Gospel of Matthew is the only gospel in which the word Church appears…

Twice:

First, in chapter 16, Jesus says, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church…

Second, in chapter 18,
addressing conflict in the church, Jesus says:

If the member refuses to listen …, tell it to the church: and if the member refuses to listen even to the church let such a one be to you as a Gentile or a tax collector.

That is pretty harsh, isn’t it, hearing Jesus say that members of the church are to be treated like outsiders, as a threat to the church….while we find elsewhere in all our Gospels Jesus ministering to Gentiles such as the Samaritan woman at the well, and going to lunch with Zacheus the tax collector.  

As we turn to the challenging turn Matthew gives to the parable of the sower, keep this in mind…

Imagine Jesus speaks to believers, people of faith like us, who sometimes need to hear what we prefer not to hear…

In Matthew, the parable of the seeds sown is a moral allegory, how the grace of the gospel does not grow because of the many ways we fail

…the soil of our souls is rocky or shallow,
the thorny cares of the world choke growth
ravenous predators consume us because of our failures. 

All of thes was certainly as true of the first disciples as it is for us modern disciples…

They failed again and again and yet in them the church grew and blossomed, seeds planted that now grow here at St. Paul’s.

Again, please keep in mind today and in the coming Sundays: Matthew is written to the church, to people like us..

…who believe want to embody grace in such a way flowers and blossoms into seeds carried far and wide on the Spirit wind.  

For us, for the church, the parable of the sower is a parable of judgment and this judgement is grace. 

This is hard to hear…yet Jesus speaks of judgment,
like a sword of truth dividing, but again, keep in mind, remain confident that we are people of faith for whom this parable of judgement offers grace
in three challenging ways.

First and always…. the character and nature of God…

As Moses says first, and as the Psalms say again and again:

“…God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” 

God’s judgement is always mercy.

God’s judgement leads us in right paths, through dark valleys…when we lose our way, as we often do, the judgments of God leads us to safety, heals us, restores us, and makes all things new..

First and always, we believe the character and nature of God is mercy, abounding in steadfast love, mercy from everlasting, revealed in the grace of Jesus Christ.

Second, we answer to God alone…

Not that others are glad to demand we answer to them

…glad to judge us….as if they can measure our souls, weigh our desires….

may in fact empty the parable of the sower of grace and employ it for their own ends, 

as if they can judge whether we are rocky or shallow soil…

as if when we face hardships and fail it is a sure sign our faith has been overwhelmed and we will be consumed. 

We are not asked to be perfect, but to be faithful in our human imperfections.  

The Lord our God is with us and for us and we answer to God alone, and for us and for how very hard to endure the judgement of others, Jesus offers this beatitude to us:

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 

Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Second and always, the judgments of God are a blessing and a mercy for people of faith.

Which brings us to the third way we find mercy in the judgement of God.

Our unfaithfulness matters to God.

We matter, our lives matter for something more than this moment…

rocky times, times when our souls are worn thin… times when our own suffering or the suffering of the world threaten to choke our capacity to believe God is with us, the Grace of Christ is given to us because we matter to God…

The lives we live, the decisions we make or fail to make, the many and often we fail and lose our way,
all of this and all of us matter to God.

For the church, for people of faith,

the parable of the sower offers grace by saying if the seeds of grace are not rooting and growing in us…

if we are not blossoming and seeds of grace are not carried by the Spirit to spread and plant in the souls of others

then God will judge as poor soil,
then we are vulnerable to being overwhelmed by unimportant concerns,

then the chattering judgment of others eats away at our capacity to receive grace for ourselves, and extend grace to others, and this matters to God who sent Jesus to reveal the mercy and grace to us, and for this reason he died for us, to help us see that we matter to God as do those who rely upon us to share the grace planted within us. 

Speaking of seed and judgement…

I took June off to rest after a demanding two-year interim.

For the month of June, I spent those glorious cool days camping and fishing, completely abandoning my perennial garden.

I gave up on growing vegetables long ago–I don’t have the discipline for it, like Joe does.  

Now, in this blistering weather, I weed and water in the morning, and then again when I come home at night, much to the delight of mosquitos.

But an interesting thing has happened.

My garden is raised beds lined with granite field stones I gathered from the first parish.  

With paths between the raised bed, which in past years I have in past years if have kept clear of weeds.

Now, you might well say, because it is the actual truth, that the weeds growing are a judgement of my neglect, and so it is…

But I am finding that seeds from purple cone flower, golden rod, black-eyed susans, russian sage, fell into the paths and have grown up and have added creative beauty because of my neglect

a sign of the growing abundance of perennials.

So I left them there and let them grow, have been enjoying them…

In past years, when I kept up with my weeding, they would have not had the chance to grow. 

but where they grow the soil there is thin,

I find they need more water than flowers growing in good soil need, so I water them every day, hoping the roots will grow strong enough that I can plant them into good soil, 

And as I water them, I think of the parable of the sower, 

And when the time comes to transplant them, I will again think of the parable of the sower.,

Thanks be to God.

Doing No Good Proper 09, Time After Pentecost +6 | July 5, 2026

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Summary: In this first sermon at St. Paul's in Baraboo, Pr. Craig introduces the tension between the Apostle Paul's honest confession of human weakness in Romans and Jesus' promise of rest in Matthew. Through the story of a congregation whose ministry to homeless families ended in disappointment and exhaustion, Pr. Craig shows how even our best efforts cannot guarantee the outcomes we hope for. The good news is that Christians are not responsible for perfect results but are called to trust God's grace and mercy, finding rest in Christ rather than in the impossible burden of trying to make everything right on our own.

Today is but our third day together.

Wednesday, my first day with you, council members were waiting to welcome me as I walked in the door, representing you all with a warm welcome.

Sue was also here to greet me, to go over hymns with me, wearing her Ringling Theater shirt.

And then Alice and I set to work preparing for today.

Thanks to Alice, we are ready to worship
not only in the liturgy which sustains us, but with the AC working. 

On my second day, for the first time I went home by way of the Merrimac Ferry and had my first ice-cream cone.  

The drive to the ferry was a delight, this is such beautiful country,

I am looking forward to taking hikes and learning more about Baraboo that is new to me, and learning about the life and worship and ministry of St. Paul’s, and the new things we will learn together. 

Well, my first Sunday with St. Paul’s seems a fitting day to turn to St. Paul’s famous words in the Epistle to the Romans.

“I do not understand my own actions.
For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is, in my flesh.

For the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability.

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

Words which seem in conflict with those of in Gospel of Matthew:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,
for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,
for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

***

Several years ago I was involved in starting a Family Promise ministry….

13 churches worked together to provide shelter and food and help with finding employment for families suffering homelessness

Each of the 13 churches took a turn 4 weeks a year hosting these families.

About as good a thing as a church can do.

The church of Jesus Christ lightening the heavy burdens of generational poverty.  

The good people of the church I was serving

—let’s call it St. Matthews, since this is our Gospel today–

”St. Matthews” had an empty parsonage which they gladly prepared for these families, and the good people of that congregation signed up for shifts to fill 24 hours for the whole week.

The rare chance to do something so very good
that we had no problem at all filling slots each of our 4 weeks.

On Monday, breakfast was served, lunches were packed, and everyone was gone by 7:30, children off to school and parents either off to work or to a day center for help finding a job.  

They returned about 4.

The good people of St. Matthew’s were there to greet families and play with the children as dinner was prepared.

One particular day, two lovely souls we’ll call Helen and Ellen had signed up to help.

Helen brought her two young girls with her to play with the children as Ellen prepared beef stroganoff lovingly made in her home kitchen.

While Helen and her girls were playing with the children,
one of the guest parents yelled something profane at her child,
snatched up the child and whipped her child right in front of Helen and her frightened girls. 

When the families set down to to homemade beef stroganoff,
they looked at the dish bewildered and uncomfortable,

Pushed the food around on their plates,
left most of it uneaten. 

Then while Ellen was doing the dishes the families ate what else they could find…hot dogs and cold cereal, energy bars that were to be used for their sack lunches the next day

Helen was heartbroken; Ellen was outraged.  

After the first year, St. Matthews withdrew from the Family Promise;  it could no longer sign-up enough people to serve homeless families.

***

To whom are Christ’s words addressed when he says, “Come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Surely, homeless families, struggling under the heavy burdens of generational poverty…

Surely, too, the good people of St. Matthew, who did all they could do, yet grew weary of the weight of their work.

But then surely also Jesus speaks to us here at St. Paul’s,
and to other churches like ours,

who are weighed down by worry over the future of our churches

wearied by the questions of what it means to follow Christ in these bewildering times. 

St. Paul answers for the first churches who were as confused and bewildered as we are:

I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

Sin he calls it, not small actions or behaviors,
but our common human condition, our flesh is the way St. Paul speaks of it, the law of the flesh, which captures us and which we cannot be free of.

We can’t help believing that when we do good and follow the rules, good should be the result, and this belief makes us vulnerable when the result does not match our own expectations

and the expectations others put on our shoulders.

***

What seems to be a conflict between what Jesus says and what St. Paul says is indeed in conflict, but in this conflict lies grace and good news.

We are not asked to solve the conflict between the promises Jesus makes and the reality of what it is like for us when we encounter our own human limitations.

We are asked instead to accept that none of us are pure,
that none of us has the capacity on our own to do good,

We we are accountable to God alone,
who judges us with steadfast mercy and grace.

We are not asked to change the world but to change our hearts,
to give up the burdensome illusion that is it all up to us
as if we were the first Christians to be weighed down by burdens too heavy to bear.

St. Paul’s words resonate with our longing and yet our inability to make everything right in the church and in the world

Our mission is to trust God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Results are are not our responsibility, and this is grace;
we are in no position to judge, and this is mercy. 

Jesus invites us to rest in him free of the ways we judge ourselves and from the judgements of others… 

For, as St. Paul says, the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability.

***

After the first year, The Family Promise ministry of St. Matthew’s ended because the longing to do good was too heavy a burden.

For a young mother to expose her children to seeing other children mistreated, for them to hear profane language, 

was too much to bear…

For someone who loves to feed people, the sound of the refrigerator and  the cupboards opening and shutting was too much to bear.

By the end of the year, it was all too much to bear,
so the good that we all wanted to do we did not do.

***

I am very glad to say that the Family Promise ministry did not end but carried on, 

other churches stepped in to ensure there were 13 congregations providing food and shelter to families suffering homelessness.

I like to think the ministry carried on because there are many good people like us who gather in worship and like us confess their sin and give to God in Christ the burden that it is up us alone, 

The conflict between the law of flesh and the gospel of Christ cannot be resolved.

It is the conflict of the cross, the source of our salvation, 

a grace and a mercy, 

setting us free the from sin and death 

of believing the good lies within us, 

when it is Christ at work through us that lightens burdens for all: thanks be to God.

Pentecost 2026: Goodbye is Hello

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As I pack my books and say goodbye to Good Shepherd, I do so with deep gratitude for the love, faithfulness, and Spirit-led journey we have shared over these past two years. Though I do not yet know where the Spirit will lead me next, Pentecost reminds us that new life begins when we release our need for control and trust the Spirit to carry us forward. I leave confident that the same Holy Spirit who guided us through this season of transition is already preparing Good Shepherd for the blessings yet to come.

Goodbye Good Shepherd

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Interim times present opportunities for transformation and renewal, but these kinds of changes are no easier for us than they were for Nicodemus. 

Change brings Nicodemus to Jesus.  

He can see God at work in Jesus in a new way, “no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person” (John 3:2d).

Jesus says Nicodemus must be born from above. But spiritual rebirth, transformation from one state of being to another, is beyond human control.

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. –John 3:8

When by faith we are open to rebirth in the Spirit, we transcend our own human limitations, as we recently experienced with the call of a new Lead Pastor.

It was a culminating moment, the voice of the congregation was the sound of the Spirit bringing new life to Good Shepherd, carrying us forward in the life-long process of transformation and rebirth. 

We might list all we accomplished in two years, more than we could have foreseen, but it is not about what specifically we accomplished that matters anyway.

What matters is Good Shepherd choosing to be led by the Spirit, remaining open active in a season of change. An active church is an attractive church, a quality candidates look for, a sign the congregation is ready to join with the new Lead Pastor as they follow the same Spirit that brought them together.

Thanks to our church leaders and the support of the congregation, Good Shepherd remained strong and vibrant through the interim period. 

Thank you Good Shepherd for the many ways you welcomed me and for your openness and courage through the many transitions of these past two years. 

I will carry in my heart and all that I learned with you to where I next serve as Interim Pastor. Where that may be, I don’t know. 

The wind blows where it chooses. 

Palimpsest 23: Easter 4A, April 26, 2026

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The 23rd Psalm is palimpsest, trace of words and lines visible as new words and lines are written over, a kind of history or record, faintly visible, yet there, present, though past. God’s promises—are written over the layers of our lives, always present even when obscured by fear or doubt. God’s goodness and mercy do not merely follow us passively but actively pursue us, with Christ as both gate and shepherd—drawing us into healing and sending us back out into new life with assurance and abundance

Holy Week 2026

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Easter Shout: Easter Sunday April 5 2026
Mary Magdalene weeps outside the empty tomb, overwhelmed by grief and convinced that someone has taken Jesus’ body, leaving her feeling powerless and alone. When Jesus calls her by name, he breaks through her sorrow, revealing himself and transforming her despair into recognition and hope. He then sends her to tell the disciples, and she becomes the first to proclaim the resurrection: “I have seen the Lord.”

What is Truth? A Good Friday, March 27, 2026
Pilate’s question “What is truth?” reveals his focus on political power and self-preservation rather than any deeper moral or spiritual truth, as he ultimately chooses to crucify Jesus to maintain order and protect his position. The worldly “truth” of power, violence, and control contrasts with the deeper truth revealed on the cross—God’s presence, love, and solidarity with the suffering. Good Friday exposes the illusion of human authority and reveals that true power lies in Christ’s sacrifice and God’s saving work.

Something New: Maundy Thursday March 26, 2026
The task of foot-washing was reserved for the lowest and most overlooked people, revealing a radical redefinition of power and status. By serving even those who would betray or abandon him, Jesus shows that true leadership means lifting others up and treating all people with dignity. This act becomes the foundation of the “new commandment”—to use whatever power or position we have to love and serve others as he did.

Playing The Part | Ash Wednesday 2026

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While we often think of hypocrites as public figures exposed for moral failure, Jesus points to something deeper. The word “hypocrite” comes from Greek drama and means “actor” — someone who wears a mask and plays a part. It is about pretending, appearing one way outwardly while hiding what is real within.

This kind of masking is common. We all play roles at times, sometimes out of politeness or self-protection. But over time, loneliness, pain, and fear can harden into masks of anger, resentment, and judgment. When we focus on fixing others or pointing out their faults, we avoid facing our own need for forgiveness and healing. We trap ourselves in old patterns because humility feels threatening.

Religion, rightly practiced, is not about performance or public piety. It is meant to protect us from the human tendencies that separate us from God and one another. At its heart is the radical truth that no one is better than anyone else — humility is the currency of the Kingdom of God.

The sign of the cross placed on our foreheads is not a performance for others. It is a personal and communal reminder that there is no room for pretending. It marks the beginning of an inward journey of repentance and honesty. In that visible moment, we acknowledge our shared humanity: we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

Lent begins with humility — removing the mask, embracing our need for grace, and following Jesus, the humanity of God.

The cross on our foreheads isn’t for others to see.
It’s for us to remember.

Leaving is Following: Epiphany 3A January 25 2026

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The Epiphany moment when John’s disciples leave behind what they believed and committed to in order to follow Jesus, shows us that revelation often asks us to let go of what feels familiar and safe. Faith grows through testimony—sharing how God has met us in difficult turning points—just as Andrew shared his experience with Peter, allowing the church and discipleship to take root.

Turning Point Revelations: Epiphany 2A, January 18 2026

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The Epiphany moment when John’s disciples leave behind what they believed and committed to in order to follow Jesus, shows us that revelation often asks us to let go of what feels familiar and safe. Faith grows through testimony—sharing how God has met us in difficult turning points—just as Andrew shared his experience with Peter, allowing the church and discipleship to take root.

Christmas Eve 2025: God Breaks In

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Christmas is about God breaking into our world with light and hope, even in the darkest of times. We carry that hope into our daily lives and relationships.

God Breaks In