Proper 11 A Weeds in our Wheat

Darnel is a ryegrass that as it begins to grow looks much like wheat. Roman law prohibited the sowing of darnel in an enemy’s wheat field, so Jesus today is talking to an audience who would have been aware of such an act and its illegality.  An enemy has sowed darnel in a farmer’s wheat and his slaves want to know how to handle it—the farmer says don’t pull it out now, you will only destroy some of the wheat that gets pulled up with the weeds.

Have you ever pulled out something from your garden that later turned out to be a good plant not a weed?  There is a little flower and shrub garden on the office side of the church. My first summer here, I saw something that looked weed-like and began to pick them out of the bed whenever I passed the office door. Later in the summer, however, I found out that these weedy looking things were actually flowers and I felt very dumb and somewhat guilty. 

We might say this about some people as well.  On a first impression some people may seem to be not our kind of people—we don’t like the way they laugh, or their dress, or whatever behavior and maybe they don’t go to church, or go to a church we don’t like.  But if often, after we allow ourselves to get to know them, they turn out to be good friends.  We may forget how we ostracized them. 

Think about the Hebrew Jacob.  Our first impressions of him are of the person who cheated his brother out of his inheritance, and the fact that his mother Rabekah played favorites with him over his brother Esau, which makes us wonder about the integrity of his family.  But in today’s reading we hear of Jacob being chosen by God to an instrument for the blessing of the Israelites. God sees the potential even in broken human beings, goes beyond the sins and uses the talents and gifts for God’s purposes. 

God gives human beings not only second, but third and fourth and multiple chances. We mess up, we act totally dumb, we make bad choices, and the good thing is that God forgives our mistakes and gives us the opportunity to act for the good, to be instruments for God’s purposes.

So you may think of the field of wheat with its weeds today not as different people who are either the goodness of wheat which gives us bread and nourishment or weeds which steal the soil from the wheat and give nothing in return. Instead what if we thought of the field as ourselves, containing both wheat and weeds? People are never either all bad or all good. Humans are a complex mix of patience and impatience, of humility and pride, of kindness and meanness.  In fact, most of our good fiction and movies play on this theme.  Even heroes like Harry Potter carry some seeds of destruction and violence within them.  Saint Peter, the rock of the church, denied knowing Christ.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had behavioral issues that when they came to light made us know he had human foibles.  There is no human being who is a clean field of wheat without weeds.

Think about what it takes to make a field without weeds—lots of herbicidal chemicals that pollute the water table of our farmland.  To be totally without our darkness is only to deny that it exists. When denying that darkness exists is when the darkness can have the most power over human beings.  In the holocaust, many Germans denied the existence of the concentration camps and refused to believe what was happening there.  When those with addictions refuse to own up to their slavery, then they cannot be healed. If a person cannot see their faults, they cannot begin to tackle them, and the faults grow.

The psalmist knows that God has searched him out and known him.  I believe that this can mean that God knows our faults, knows the weeds that try to choke out our wheat.  Search me out and know my weeds, you might pray to God, for it is acknowledging those weeds before God that you can know the gift of forgiveness, and begin to heal.

To know that there is nowhere we can go that God is not there is to know that God loves our wheat field even as it is infested with weeds. God knows our troubles, the things and people that challenge us, the times when we think and do things not worthy of us, the hurts we harbor, the scars and grief that prevent us from growing into a strong field.  And God gives our field a chance to handle those hurts without judgment. God is alongside to comfort, give us courage in the face of our troubles, to heal our wounds and make us whole.  Our field of wheat and weeds is allowed to grow to fullness, to see which of those things that look like weeds are actually wheat, and to allow the goodness of the nurturing wheat to choke out the weeds along the way.

It’s when I know I am loved and cared for in spite of and because of my wounds, that then I can forgive others their wounds and hurts too.  When we see each other as fields of mixed wheat and weeds, and see people as full human beings, not either fully good or bad, we see that this mixture is for God to judge not us and that God can redeem any situation, any person, for God’s purposes to further the kingdom of peace and justice.

God, search me out, know my weeds and my wheat and help me grow into a nurturing human being you want me to be.

Proper 11A Weeds in our Wheat

Darnel is a ryegrass that as it begins to grow looks much like wheat. Roman law prohibited the sowing of darnel in an enemy’s wheat field, so Jesus today is talking to an audience who would have been aware of such an act and its illegality.  An enemy has sowed darnel in a farmer’s wheat and his slaves want to know how to handle it—the farmer says don’t pull it out now, you will only destroy some of the wheat that gets pulled up with the weeds.

Have you ever pulled out something from your garden that later turned out to be a good plant not a weed?  There is a little flower and shrub garden on the office side of the church. My first summer here, I saw something that looked weed-like and began to pick them out of the bed whenever I passed the office door. Later in the summer, however, I found out that these weedy looking things were actually flowers and I felt very dumb and somewhat guilty. 

We might say this about some people as well.  On a first impression some people may seem to be not our kind of people—we don’t like the way they laugh, or their dress, or whatever behavior and maybe they don’t go to church, or go to a church we don’t like.  But if often, after we allow ourselves to get to know them, they turn out to be good friends.  We may forget how we ostracized them. 

Think about the Hebrew Jacob.  Our first impressions of him are of the person who cheated his brother out of his inheritance, and the fact that his mother Rabekah played favorites with him over his brother Esau, which makes us wonder about the integrity of his family.  But in today’s reading we hear of Jacob being chosen by God to an instrument for the blessing of the Israelites. God sees the potential even in broken human beings, goes beyond the sins and uses the talents and gifts for God’s purposes. 

God gives human beings not only second, but third and fourth and multiple chances. We mess up, we act totally dumb, we make bad choices, and the good thing is that God forgives our mistakes and gives us the opportunity to act for the good, to be instruments for God’s purposes.

So you may think of the field of wheat with its weeds today not as different people who are either the goodness of wheat which gives us bread and nourishment or weeds which steal the soil from the wheat and give nothing in return. Instead what if we thought of the field as ourselves, containing both wheat and weeds? People are never either all bad or all good. Humans are a complex mix of patience and impatience, of humility and pride, of kindness and meanness.  In fact, most of our good fiction and movies play on this theme.  Even heroes like Harry Potter carry some seeds of destruction and violence within them.  Saint Peter, the rock of the church, denied knowing Christ.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had behavioral issues that when they came to light made us know he had human foibles.  There is no human being who is a clean field of wheat without weeds.

Think about what it takes to make a field without weeds—lots of herbicidal chemicals that pollute the water table of our farmland.  To be totally without our darkness is only to deny that it exists. When denying that darkness exists is when the darkness can have the most power over human beings.  In the holocaust, many Germans denied the existence of the concentration camps and refused to believe what was happening there.  When those with addictions refuse to own up to their slavery, then they cannot be healed. If a person cannot see their faults, they cannot begin to tackle them, and the faults grow.

The psalmist knows that God has searched him out and known him.  I believe that this can mean that God knows our faults, knows the weeds that try to choke out our wheat.  Search me out and know my weeds, you might pray to God, for it is acknowledging those weeds before God that you can know the gift of forgiveness, and begin to heal.

To know that there is nowhere we can go that God is not there is to know that God loves our wheat field even as it is infested with weeds. God knows our troubles, the things and people that challenge us, the times when we think and do things not worthy of us, the hurts we harbor, the scars and grief that prevent us from growing into a strong field.  And God gives our field a chance to handle those hurts without judgment. God is alongside to comfort, give us courage in the face of our troubles, to heal our wounds and make us whole.  Our field of wheat and weeds is allowed to grow to fullness, to see which of those things that look like weeds are actually wheat, and to allow the goodness of the nurturing wheat to choke out the weeds along the way.

It’s when I know I am loved and cared for in spite of and because of my wounds, that then I can forgive others their wounds and hurts too.  When we see each other as fields of mixed wheat and weeds, and see people as full human beings, not either fully good or bad, we see that this mixture is for God to judge not us and that God can redeem any situation, any person, for God’s purposes to further the kingdom of peace and justice.

God, search me out, know my weeds and my wheat and help me grow into a nurturing human being you want me to be.

Proper 10 A Tending the Seeds

Here we have another agricultural parable from Jesus.  A story from a type of life that is not so important to us today in our daily activities, unless we garden like crazy.  At the rectory we barely have enough space to put in a few vegetables, but we are very conscious of the quality of the soil and have added compost and top soil to enhance it.  We have been rewarded this year by a pretty good crop of lettuce and promising tomato plants.  Anyone can go to the University of Illinois extension office to get consultation about their soil and how to improve it.  Agronomists know quite a lot about the types of nutrients soils need to support growth of all kinds of seeds. 

If you have ever travelled in desert country, you also know that some kinds of plants can make a go of it in what farmers in Illinois would consider pretty poor soil; in fact one of the prettiest sights is the spring desert in bloom.  Because it lacks robustness, about twenty acres of my farm has soil that only supports alfalfa and wheat, but those crops do amazingly well on that ground.  We also used to grow watermelons pretty well there, which neighbor boys used to come and steal from us.

So the parable of the sowing of the seeds seems to have some gaps in it.  It presumes only a certain type of seed that needs a rich environment to grow.  A seed that must have sufficient organic matter and not too much rockiness, the depth to keep it from birds and wind, and the nurturing of an attentive farmer.  How many of us can say we have depth in our relationship with God? How many of us would characterize ourselves as good nurturers of our spiritual life or say that we have prepared our lives to live the word of God and make it grow?  And, how many Christians really take their task of spreading the word of God seriously, so that they not only talk about their faith but tend to the faith of those they care about?

Tending to a garden is hard work—preparing good soil, planting by watching which seeds need sun and which need shade; making sure there is sufficient water and the seeds grow without weeds.  Some good gardeners can spend most of every day tending to their plants, and get rewarded by beauty and abundance.

We know how to become a master gardener, but do we know how to become a master gardener with God?  Does our life get filled up with ungodly weeds, with blazing, burning sun, or with lack of attention during dry spells?

The University of Illinois can teach us to become a master gardener, while the church teaches us to become a gardener of our souls.  In this place we learn about the soil we must prepare by prayer, by confession and turning our life around, by taking eucharist with others and being in relationship with not only our friends but with our enemies. We learn about God by loving others, giving our time and talent, becoming a gardener of others’ souls.

Tending God’s garden of souls, like weeding and watering anything that grows, needs constant attention.  So, we carve out time for church and also for quiet time, for rest and reflection.  We make our relationship with God a priority by giving it time—for reading scripture, for prayer and meditation, for giving in time, money or talent to the poor, the sick, the dying.  In whatever way God is calling us, we respond by tending our soul, the seed of God’s love in our life that must have prepared soil, be kept from blowing away in the wind and taken away by the birds that peck at us.

Today I ask you to consider the types of activities that feed your soul and to make sure that this summer you take time to give priority to some of those things at least once a week.  Whenever the thermometer hits a certain temperature, make it a signal for you to tend to your soul needs.  Whenever it rains, see it like a beep on your phone reminding you of God’s message to love yourself and your neighbor by doing what tends those relationships of love.  Whenever you see sunny skies, remind yourself of God’s sun shining in your life, and be comforted by the warmth of that love.  

Tending the seeds of God’s message of good news takes all that Christians have to give.  While how we tend these seeds in the summer may differ from the rest of the church year, we have no less need for tending our spiritual life.  Whether you take in the beauty of the summer outdoors or read something uplifting on a rainy day, or make vacation plans here or at home, remember God’s grace in your life and how to spread it to others. 

At the end of the summer, good gardners expect good outcomes—beautiful flowers and abundant harvest.  So it is with God’s seeds planted by God and nurtured by us with God’s help.  The fruits of love, patience, kindness, and all the other spiritual effects become evident in our behavior toward others and even how we begin to think about ourselves as worthy of God’s love and forgiveness.

May each of us this summer have a great time tending our spiritual garden and may it be bountiful for us and those all around us.