That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on a path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. If you have ears, hear!”
Matthew 13:1-9,18-23
“Hear, then, the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet such a person has no root but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of this age and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”
My sermon from the 7th Sunday after Pentecost Sunday (July 12, 2026) on Matthew 13:1-9,18-23.
So most of my pop culture attention has, over these last few weeks, been focused on all the international tourists discovering Waffle House and Ranch dressing for the very first time. It’s been fun seeing Scots, Norwegians, Colombians, and Egyptians trying to physically handle all the fast food we consume. But last weekend, there was another cultural event that wasn’t related to the World Cup and the 4th of July. And that’s because the world’s biggest post star got married at Madison Square Garden. I’ll admit I feel a little rawness in my soul as a Denver Broncos fan bringing up anything related to the Kansas City Chiefs. Yet Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift are the kind of celebrities we love to put on a pedestal and then immediately tear down. Taylor Swift is a force onto herself and she’s the kind of public figure we do our best to define. We want to see their union as either a fantasy we should aspire to or a sign of our civilization’s immediate collapse. But there’s also the reality that these pop culture milestones are always more than whatever we want them to be. The couple also has a say on what their moment will be. And paying attention to what happens rather than defining it before it even begins has a way of revealing who we choose to be too.
Now noticing what took place at the Swift/Kelce wedding isn’t particularly easy since the 1000+ attendees locked up their phones in small individual glass cases before entering the event space. Gossip, though, spreads quickly and we learned the basketball / ice rink / concert space was decorated as a heavily wooded garden. The comedian and pick-up basketball star Adam Sandler officiated the nuptials while Taylor Swift walked down the aisle to an instrumental version of one of her own songs. Paul McCartney, at some point, sang the song “I Want to Hold Your Hand” for the first time in decades. And during Swift and Kele’s 40 minute long vows, handkerchiefs embroidered with “TT” were handed out to everyone. The food at the reception included pasta in parmesan wheels, cheesesteaks by Bradley Cooper, mountains of french fries, pop tarts, and other tailgating kinds of foods. When it came time to dance and mingle, guests were entertained by carnival games that included a raffle for a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle. Swift and Kelce, it’s been said, beamed the entire night and they kicked everything off by donating approximately 26 million dollars to a number of charities. Now I’m sure if we had an unlimited budget to plan our own party attended by a thousand of our closest friends, it wouldn’t be easy making it feel like our own while meeting everyone’s expectation for what her wedding should be. We, especially if we’re a woman, know our culture is very good at tearing apart the choices we make. And the online response to the Swift and Kelce wedding has been very predictable with many folks using the same word over and over again to describe it. To them, the whole thing was tacky when it should have had way more class. Taylor is the biggest pop star in the world which means her day was never only going to be for her since we love sharing our opinion about things that do not impact on our lives. And that’s why I appreciated a commentary by Anne Helen Petersen who believed the word “tacky” should be seen as something akin to a badge of honor. She wrote: People wield [tacky] as an insult, but I’d like to reframe it as an accurate description of pretty much any large, fun wedding between two performers who actually really like — even love — each other. … [E]xuberance isn’t classy. Neither is abundance. “Classiness” is, above all else, contained. Prim. Smooth. Subdued. Streamlined. It can be novel but only while hewing to tradition; it can be personal but only if the person themselves is, well, classy, which is to say, largely absent of personality.
Classy is a venue without a price tag. It’s the simplest French twist for a hairstyle and a single strand of inherited pearls. It’s a manicure with nude nails but never, never French Tips. It’s a perfectly manicured guest list without a single person thinking of posting their thoughts on [social media] in the aftermath. It’s an “acceptable” amount of people in the wedding party or no wedding party at all. It includes absolutely no elements gleaned from Pinterest… A classy wedding is beautiful in photos (but there shouldn’t be too many, god forbid) and utterly dull in practice.
…[Taylor Swift is] a good celebrity. And the vast majority of celebrities are tacky. Same for the vast majority of celebrity weddings. One type of tacky aspires, desperately, for class, revealing a well of unhappiness at its core. The other type of tacky isn’t transgressive, per se, so much as secure in itself: boisterous, clashing, abundant, or, in this case, everything wedding all at once.
Boisterous, clashing, abundant, exuberant and secure in itself isn’t only a good description for the pop cultural event we weren’t invited to. It’s also a series of awesome words for who our God chooses to be. There’s a tendency, especially after hearing Jesus’ own interpretation of this parable, to focus our attention on being the kind of good soil where faith can grow. But during a weekend when we said goodbye to a pillar of our community and while all the wider conflict, division, and being terrible to each other is on full display, there’s something surprising about a God who chooses to be extravagant. We have a God who refuses to be strategic when it comes to love and grace. God doesn’t choose the best and the brightest, the most compassionate and the most faithful to be Christ’s body in the world. Even if we have a high opinion of ourselves, there are plenty of times when we fail to love others in the way God wants us to. Rather than sharing life in all we say and do, we let our anxieties, fears, and biases limit what we believe God’s love should do. We have, however, a God who chooses to keep throwing seeds of hope everywhere. We have a God who will not be constrained. We assume God will always act like us – trying to be strategic and classy when it comes to the people God Jesus calls to follow him. Yet the God who chose a human life; chose parents and caregivers to raise him; who hung out with friends who rarely understood him; who welcomed the unwanted and broke bread with the most unclassy people imaginable; our God chooses to wield a very tacky kind of grace that’s big enough for all kinds of people – including you and me. And since our God is this tacky, God is also – I think – inviting us to be that tacky too. We can let our own acts of compassion, kindness, mercy, and welcome mimic the Jesus who fed, healed, and served. We can worry less about being classy when sharing our faith and choose to let everyone know Jesus is for them too. We can be exuberant and boisterous in naming our experience with God – admitting the prayers that were answered and those that still remain open. And while we might not always witness an immediate impact when we live our faith out loud, a seed of love and hope sowed on every thorny path will always have a chance to grow. We don’t need to be the biggest celebrity in the world to be extravagant with the gifts God has given to us. We can, instead, be the tacky kind of people who trust that Jesus really does make a difference in our lives and in our world.
Amen.