Faith in Progress

July 30, 2017 Matthew 13:31-52 At first, our Gospel reading from Matthew seemed like the perfect reading for me to preach about after two weeks spent several national parks in the wilderness of California.  Especially the growth-from-small-seeds part.   My family spent time among the giant sequoias at Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks and we were shocked to pick up the surprisingly tiny little pine cones that held the seeds to these unbelievably massive trees that my entire family of five’s arms outspread could not reach around!  It seemed impossible that the two could be related.   So I was ready to hang with Matthew and his mustard seed with its explosive growth.  That little pine cone, so precious that signs everywhere told us we must not take them from the park, was firmly in my mind. But then I read more closely.  And got to the part about the weeping and gnashing of teeth and the fiery furnace.  Really, Matthew?!  We are going on week three of that stuff now - en

July 2, 2017 Genesis 22:1-14 Isaac Did you know that my name, Isaac, means laughter?  What a joke that is.  I think the last time I really laughed was way back when with my brother Ishmael.  Before my mother sent him away.  But ever since then, any time something starts to bring a smile to my face, that terror comes back to me.  There I am again trudging up the mountain loaded down with wood for the fire.  My father silently walking next to me.  In my dreams I can see myself as I was then, still trusting that my father has my best interests at heart, still believing that I am a child of promise like my parents always tell me.  I try to scream, to shake my boy-self awake, to warn him to turn around, to drop the wood and run away and never look back.  But I can’t make a sound.  And the silence is deafening.  After that time on the mountain I rushed down a different path from my father and never talked to him or my mother again.  But I never really got free.  They were sti