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.
