July 17, 2005 - 9th Sunday After Pentecost - Mother Stephanie Parker

FIRST READING: Isaiah 44: 6-8
PSALM: Psalm 86: 11-17
SECOND READING: Romans 8: 26-39
GOSPEL: Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43

With world events being what they have been since 9-11, and with terrorism seeming to be ever on the rise, with the bombings in Madrid and, most recently, in London, it is pretty obvious, I think, to everyone, that global anxiety is running pretty high. At our Wednesday night service that we have in the library, some people came in and commented that they had just watched the news, and the news was so terrible, that it actually propelled them to the service so that they might have some sense of relief from this horrible anxiety that they were feeling.

We only have to turn on the news or open a newspaper to be plunged into a morass of despair and fear at the state of the world. It seems as though conflict has invaded every sphere of our lives, and there is no place of rest and comfort to be found anywhere. The nation is at war; the Church is even in conflict; and we can read every day, in those same newspapers, that our children are gunning one another down in our schools. And it is not only in our high schools - in grade schools, children are bringing weapons to class. It is as if we can truly feel the whole creation groaning, just as Paul described in that letter to the Romans.

As Barbara Brown Taylor says, "Those of us who believe in God have a hard time explaining - to ourselves or anyone else - why things are the way they are. Some fear that these events are a sign that the end is near, while others are afraid that God has simply abandoned humanity once and for all".

The details may have changed since Jesus sat teaching His disciples, or since Paul wrote his letter to the Romans, but the dilemma for us remains the same: What should we do about this mess? What can we do, and why - why is it this way in the first place? If God is all-powerful, why isn't the world - and especially the Church - weed-free and nothing but those waving amber waves of grain?

So, in the parable we hear today, most often titled "the wheat and the weeds", Jesus confronts us with the mind-bending paradox of the necessity for good and evil to exist side by side in God's creation. He tells us that we are to accept this necessity until that time when God, in all His wisdom and mercy, decides that the time is ripe for harvest. More than that, and I think more difficult, we are asked to confront the rather harsh truth that the wheat and the weeds can, at times, so closely resemble one another, that, in the end, we, as God's servants, are utterly incapable of telling them apart.

This may seem like a particularly hard bit of wisdom to take if you feel like your life is being strangled and choked by those invading weeds. We all know we've got 'em! Weedy events or, even scarier for me at times, weedy people, who are not part of our plan. People or events who are not welcome and who seem to suck the good out of our lives, like energy vampires, and rob us of the sunlight and water that was meant for us and not for the weeds of the world. Some of these weeds just irritate us like poison ivy or poison oak, but others are deadly, like Belladonna or nightshade - and God says we're not supposed to do anything about it?

In the midst of our confusion and this very difficult teaching, there is one thing, my friends, of which we can be certain. And I don't often speak of certainty in this pulpit - it scares me to death to speak of such things - but of this I am certain: God's property is always to have mercy. In God's infinite love and mercy, we can trust, deeply trust, that even difficult teachings are intended to bring us to that abundant life that we all desire.

So, today, as we walk out in our mind's eye into this glorious field of God's planting, we are destined to understand that we have, in fact, been given a great gift. Today, Jesus gives us to understand that we need not weary ourselves with the hard work of weeding.

Now, how many of you have weeded a garden or a flowerbed, small or large? Yeah, okay! I have only done it once or twice. I learned my lesson, because, for me, just one experience was enough to drive home the message that this chore is often sweaty and buggy, and, at the end of the day, we can all probably look forward to a backache as our reward. And I am not talking about the simple weeding pleasures that can be found with a bottle of Round-Up, my preferred weeding method. I'm talking about the very discriminating activity of weeding around the precious plants by hand. Discriminating weeding requires that you bend over low to the ground and quiz each sprout closely, in order to determine its worthiness to remain, and, at least for me, it is all too easy to grow tired or complacent in this kind of labor. In the blink of an eye, you can cruelly pluck from the ground one of the very fragile shoots that you were working so hard to save.

So, in today's Gospel, Jesus frees us from that mind-bending and back-breaking labor - Thanks Be To God!! More than that, Jesus tells us that we need not wait around anxiously for the harvest, because, not only are we not the weeders, but we are not the reapers. We are to do nothing more than marvel at the beauty of the grain as it grows toward the sun and flows with the rhythm of soft winds. We can stand in the center of the field with our arms upraised, while the warmth of God's love calls us into fullness of life - that fullness of life that is God's promise to us as a pure gift.

Now, why do you think it is that we find it so difficult to accept this gift? To hear the news that we are not the weeders - why is that so hard to take? Why would we rather break our backs and jeopardize the wheat by weeding, when we are granted the joy of simply marveling at the splendid work of the Sower? Why do we continue to doubt and question the Master who obviously does not fear the enemy and understands that field far better than we ever can, or ever will? Are we then simply to forget the weeds? Do we ignore evil and continue to eat, drink, and be merry? Absolutely not! The Gospels are full of Jesus' teachings about how to confront and to resist evil, but, in today's passage, Jesus seeks to remind us that good and evil are often so intertwined at the root that, to pluck a weed, is very often to kill the wheat. Evil is almost never simply "over there" and easy to spot.

We can, of course - and I can hear your minds spinning, just like mine did when I wrote that line - we can, of course, point to those times both past and present when evil does seem easy enough to see. The Nazi regime comes easily and readily to mind, as well as the current pain and devastation that I talked about earlier with terrorists' bombings seemingly just increasing more as we speak, and, very often and most frustratingly, in the name of religion.

What about those times when evil is found growing out of our own beliefs and faith? Right now, it is very easy for Christians to point to other belief systems and wonder, but what about those times when evil is found growing out of our own field? As Americans, we must never, ever forget the good men and women, faithful Christians all, who, in good conscience, supported the forced dismantling and removal of the Cherokee Nation - removing them from lands that they had occupied for generations, a society that had grown and had a culture that, quite frankly, far surpassed our own. We did this while our emerging Nation turned a blind and righteous eye, and many fell by the way - thousands - in that horrible, terrible time.

In one of the first crusades, knights from Western Europe rampaged through an Arab town on their way to the Holy Land to kill Muslims, and they killed everyone in sight. It was not until later, when they turned the bodies over to pillage the bodies, that they found crosses around almost all of their victims' necks. It never occurred to these Western European Christians that Christians came in brown, as well as in white.

We see, in these examples, exactly the kind of horror and devastation that God knows does and will happen again and again and again in our world if we decide to appoint ourselves as the weeders.

Now, history sketches these events on a large canvas, and that large canvas can allow us to stand back and feel some measure of distance and safety from the painful scars, right? "That was then, and this is now", we say to ourselves. But you know and I know that there are people in this congregation, including your Priest standing in this pulpit, who other faithful Christians would say are weeds, and that we need to be plucked. It is heresy for some of you to be considered Christians, open and alive in your life, and it is heresy for me to stand in this pulpit. We are weeds that some would say need to be plucked.

So, I think that, this day, Jesus is asking us not necessarily to atone for history - that will be done by God - but asking us to look closer at our own lives. We are asked to step deep into the foundations and roots of our own lives and our families and our community and admit that most often we, ourselves, do not have the ability to tell the wheat from the weeds. We can decide today to stop focusing our energies on the weeds and simply do everything in our power to be a people who nourish the wheat.

Again, we hear this from Barbara Brown Taylor, "God allows a mixed field, whether we like it, approve of it, understand it, or not. God asks us to tolerate a mixed field too - both in the Church and in the world. There is only one thing to be clear about - this is not remotely a call for us to be passive. It is, instead, a call to strenuous activity, maybe even more strenuous than the weeding itself. Just think of how hard it is, as faithful Christians, to forgive someone who has wronged you or hurt you and, even more difficult, to forgive them again and again and again. Think how strenuous and hard it is on our souls and on our minds to pray for our enemies".

This is the hard work and the strenuous activity we are called to do. Think of how hard it is, in times of despair, to find that glimmer of hope - hard and strenuous activity we are, in fact, called to do. It is not easy being wheat, especially with so many weeds competing for the soil, but what God seems to know is that the best and only real solution for evil is for the wheat to bear good fruit.

Our job in this mixed field is not to give ourselves over to the enemy by devoting all of our energy to the destruction of the weeds. Guess what, my friends, when we give ourselves over to the energy of destructing the weeds, what do we become? Weeds! No, we are to mind our own business, and our business is being the voice, the face, the heart, and the hands of God's reconciling love in the world. That is our job - to walk out with God's love and practice every day being vulnerable and unshielded to those we meet. God knows that these are difficult things for us. God also knows that we are, all at once, Saints, and we are, all at once, sinners. And, my friends, I say again that there is no doubt that we are blessed - utterly blessed - because, above all, our God, the true Sower and the true Reaper, is far more merciful and compassionate than we will ever be.

So, in the end, I think that today's Gospel is not so much about us in our weedy waste or our wheatly splendor, but about God's abounding love and wisdom, now in the present time and at that ultimate harvest. In God's harvest, love will be stronger than hate or suspicion. Faith will be shown as greater than pride or prejudice, and hope will be greater than any defeat or disillusionment. In this harvest, there will be no doubt that God is far greater than the enemy who would seek to destroy what God has so lovingly sown.

So, never doubt it!. Today, in this difficult teaching, we are given an incredible gift. Jesus tells us that we need not weary ourselves with endless fear and anxiety over the back-breaking chore of weeding or the state of the suffering in the world. Respond, yes! Worry, no! We are called only to stand tall through the sun and the rain and simply become the glorious wheat that God, in God's Infinite Love, absolutely created every single one of to be.

And for that, this day, I say -

Thanks Be to God!