The Good News!

Welcome! I am the Rev. Ken Saunders. I serve as the rector of St. James Episcopal Church in Greeneville, Tennessee (since May 2018). These sermons here were delivered in the context of worship at the various places I have served.

[NOTE: Sermons (or Homilies) are commentaries that follow the scripture lessons, and are specifically designed to be heard. They are "written for the ear" and may contain sentence fragments and be difficult to read. They are NOT intended to be academic papers.]

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Year A - Proper 11 - July 20, 2014

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III
Trinity Episcopal Church
Towson, MD

Year A - Proper 11 - July 20, 2014

Lectionary Readings for Proper 11A

 

When I was a child, I liked the pretty little yellow flowers that were in our back yard. You know the ones I’m talking about… The ones that after they matured became fluffy white balls of seed that with one blow, would go off into the wind and the wind would carry it off. Of course, I was a child… and as a child I didn’t know this pretty little yellow flower… this plant (this dandelion, - otherwise known as an Irish daisy, a bitterwort, or strangely enough, a priest’s crown) was actually a weed… I didn’t know, until I went to the feed and seed store with my father to get some dandelion killer for our lawn… Weed killer so that it wouldn’t choke out our grass. Weed killer… because those pretty yellow flowers were undesirable… they were a nuisance when trying to grow lush green grass.

It’s easy for us to go along in life thinking we know the difference between weeds and wheat. Judging this or that to be a nuisance or worse yet…  this person and that person as undeserving, worthless, or in the way. We are quick and critical as a society to judge – deciding who is in and who is out, based on the color of skin, income bracket, or what school we did or didn’t attend. We think that we are the wheat, and if anything is different from us, then it must be the weeds.

Even in our jobs we come across weeds… We sometimes feel that our jobs are so infested with weeds, that we either hide within them or we let them distract us from our mission. I’m talking about the things that bog us down… e-mail, phone-calls, and those endless meetings… things that can make us look like we are working hard bringing about the kingdom of God, but really, what they really are is indicators of our own souls – torn between the good and evil, right and wrong, normal and not normal.

Jesus uses the parable of weeds and wheat to explain the coming of the kingdom of God, when God will be the final judge between the good and evil of this world, between the weeds and the wheat. He uses the parable to explain a time when there will be no more worry about evil, or death and destruction.

I believe that Jesus’ parable also applies to the church today… it’s an excellent parable for the church to hear, because in the church… in the one body, the church, there are both weeds and wheat. Yes, the gathered church is this crazy mixed bag of destructive weeds and productive wheat.

Destructive weeds that draw the church from the mission of bringing forth the kingdom of God. Damaging evil judging weeds that grow up right alongside the wheat… the faithful, believing, pious, and righteous, children of the living God.

The first kneejerk reaction is do what the servants of the field wanted to do… to do what my father wanted to do… to go pull the weeds, to get them out of there, because they are a nuisance when trying to grow good wheat… when you are trying to make good and faithful disciples, there’s nothing worse than having the evil one around messing up our plan, drawing us from the task that God has given us to do… But that’s not what Jesus says do… Jesus says that if the weeds are uprooted, then the good wheat will be disturbed also, and so we are not to be the judge… the owner of the field… Jesus… the son of Man is the only judge.

Because our propensity is to choose wrongly, maybe it’s more like we are both… both the weeds and the wheat existing together within ourselves, entangled and intertwined in our hearts, in our souls, and in our minds, the balance of evil and good making us both weeds and wheat.

But maybe we are just wheat - because we are all children of God, made in the image of the creator, adopted in our baptism as heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ – inheritors of the Kingdom of God.

Paul gives us a wonderful definition of how we are members of God’s family when he says, “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption.  When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.”

So… what are we children of God to do in this crazy world of weeds and wheat? We are to do exactly what Jesus says and remain steadfast and faithful and let God be the judge. But that is admittedly so hard to do, especially if you think that you’re the wheat…

The symbolism found in Jacob’s dream in the passage from Genesis gives us a place to begin thinking about our tasks as children of God: “He dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!” What a great dream!

Jacob realized what a powerful message there was in that dream and so he set up a pillar – an altar made from the rock that was his head-rest, and gave it the name, Bethel (which means house of God), setting that place aside as holy and sacred.

Jacob received a message from God in that dream – the promise of a family and descendants that would stretch far and wide, across the centuries and down through the generations. The promise of family was as important then as it is for us today.

All of us are offered a great message and reminder in the reading from Genesis this morning. The ladder! – that ladder connecting heaven and earth is there for us! and - as those angels that were going up and down on that ladder, joining humanity to heaven… so we…  we who say that we are followers of Jesus… we must be like those angels.

We must be those people who play a part in joining the world to heaven by the way we live our lives. Now that sounds like a lot of work…  But we are human, and living in a very human world full of weeds and wheat… And because we are human, we are guaranteed to have hard days – lots of them – more, it seems, for some than for others.

But, if we are serious about claiming to be Christian... claiming to be the children of God that we are, then we must be willing to accept the angelic role of helping connect heaven to earth. And that activity that sounds like it’s lots of work – is actually our ministry. It becomes our purpose and our passion. It becomes our reason of life.

Each one of us has been given some special talent, some gift of ability or personality or some resource that we can use to help others travel up and down that figurative ladder between heaven and earth. Each and every one of us is called to be a messenger…  an angelic messenger of God’s love to others. And our command from Jesus himself is to love ALL… Jesus says in the lesson this morning that we are not to worry about what’s weeds and what’s wheat, but we should let God sort it out.

If we love ALL then we just might break the mold, and we give that person that we initially think is a weed a chance to become wheat.

As a child, not knowing what I was doing, I blew on the dandelion and made the seeds go everywhere… It is with that innocence that we approach love, love of the weeds of this world not knowing the difference between the weeds and the wheat… knowing and trusting that it’s God that plants the “good seeds,” and they grow up, and become healthy and vibrant grains of the finest wheat.