If you were in church a little over a year ago, on
Sunday, June 26, 2016, you will certainly remember with crystal clarity the
gospel reading and of course the rector’s inspirational sermon that morning on the text
from the ninth chapter of St. Luke’s gospel. To refresh our memory: after their experience on the Mount of the Transfiguration
Jesus and his disciples began their great journey toward Jerusalem to observe
the Passover. In Luke’s story a long and
increasingly dramatic procession to Holy Week.
The road from the Galilee to the Holy City passed first through the
region of Samaria, the home of people of a mixed Jewish and non-Jewish
ethnicity whose religious beliefs were different from those of orthodox Judaism. Between
Jews and Samaritans a kind of deep and persistent hostility over generations
and centuries, and Jewish religious pilgrims would be to say the least
unwelcome in Samaritan neighborhoods. And
so as we heard on June 26th,
2016, Luke chapter 9 verses 52-56: “And he [that is, Jesus] sent
messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to
make ready for him; but the people would not receive him, because his face was
set toward Jerusalem. [all the local
hotels and motels and Air bnb proprietors see them coming and hang “no vacancy
“ signs in the windows] And when his disciples James and John saw
it, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to bid fire come down from heaven and
consume them?’ But he turned and rebuked them.
And they went on to another village.”
The disciples must have wondered why Jesus was hesitant to act more
decisively in response to this disrespectful opposition. But in the depth of the mind and heart of
Jesus there was a different knowledge.
And as you will recall from my sermon just a little over a year ago this
episode in Samaria to what we will later hear in the eighth chapter of Acts,
after the arrest and stoning of St. Stephen, when the little Church of
Jerusalem is attacked and dispersed.
Beginning at Acts Chapter 8, verse 4: “Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to a city of Samaria, and
proclaimed to them the Christ. Then the multitudes with one accord gave heed to
what was said by Philip, and saw the signs which he did. For unclean spirits came out of many who were
possessed, crying with a loud voice; and many who were paralyzed or lame were
healed. So there was much joy in that
city.”
For James and John in Luke 9, all they could see was what was right in
front of them in the present, and they were ready to pull the trigger--but
Jesus knew that among these Samaritans were those he came to save. We might
say: the first rich foreign mission field.
These Samaritans who would soon, very soon, hear the gospel from Philip and
respond with joy, when the time was right.
Just wait, James and John. There
is more going on than you can see or know in this moment. Be
patient. Which is what I am thinking
about as we approach the gospel reading this morning. God’s patience.
I remember my friend our retired dean George Werner used to say that
the challenge for Moses and Joshua was that they were to lead the whole people
into the Promised Land, not just the Commandos.
The weak and the wayward, the very old, the very young. Everybody.
Not just the strong. And that
takes time, and it’s a messy process. The
Good Shepherd is not going to allow even one of his sheep to be lost. Not even the last and the least. It may take a long while sometimes for the
fruit to ripen on the vine, to shift this evolving metaphor. The point is, not to be so quick to judge, to
leap to conclusions. Not to be in such a
hurry. Wait and see, give space for the
full work of the Spirit to be made known in God’s way, in God’s own time. My ways are not your ways, says the Lord. Jesus already knew his own among these
Samaritans. He knew them long before
they knew him. He knew them already and
loved them. People of his pasture,
sheep of his hand. And in the
generosity of his heart he was going to give them all the time they needed.
Anyhow, as I said, that was a year ago, Luke9. But it came to mind for me as we would turn
this morning to this gospel reading taken from Matthew 13, the Parable of the
Wheat and the Tares. The
same concern and emphasis, on the patience of God. His thoughts not our thoughts, nor his ways
our ways. Which we would hear this morning as good news,
and something we can be and should be very thankful for. For his patience with us.
“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in
his field.” Once again as in the
Parable of the Sower and the Five Kinds of Soil that we read last Sunday: the sowing of the good seed, which Jesus tells his disciples
has to do with the proclamation of the kingdom, the preaching of the Good
News. In the first parable the issue was
that the seed fell on all different kinds of soil. Dry, or hard, places where the birds can get
at it, or ground already covered with thistles.
Here in the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares the seed is all sown in
the one field, in good soil. But even
so, there are complications. An enemy comes in secretly, while the farmer and his servants
are sleeping, and scatters another kind of seed in the same field. Not the good seed of the kingdom, not the
gospel, but something that doesn’t
belong. When time passes the farmer and
his servants see that as the good growth is taking place in the field, so also
the weeds are growing. The servants are
upset and agitated and want to do something right away, to get in there and
clean things up. Don’t just stand there,
do something! Like James and John in the
Samaritan village. But the farmer tells them to be patient. When the growth is young it’s just not always
possible to tell which sprout is of the good seed, and which is a weed. They are just simply to be patient-- to let
all grow together, the good plants and the bad.
Until the harvest, when the truth will be known.
A bit later in verses 36-40 Jesus explains the parable. We see that the Sower is Christ himself, who
is and who fulfills and who proclaims the Word.
The seed, Jesus says, stands for the “Sons of the Kingdom,” what grows
from the Word, the harvest, the names inscribed in the Book of Life. The enemy is the Evil One, God’s enemy, and
the Weeds that grow alongside the good plants are his offspring. The two live
side by side in this world, they look very much alike, they occupy the same
space, they grow together, flourish together.
They seem as near as anyone could tell by observation to share an
equally bright future. But this is simply
on account of God’s patience. In order to avoid even the slightest
possibility of collateral damage, so that not
one good plant is endangered, the Children of Light and the Children of
Darkness are left to grow together for a season. But on the Last Day, at the Harvest, the
discernment is to be made with a thoroughgoing precision. All the “causes of sin” and those whose lives
are allied to evil are pulled out by the roots and cast into the fiery furnace,
where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. While the “righteous will shine like the sun
in the kingdom of their Father.”
In part this parable directs us to recurring questions about why evil
exists in the world and in our own lives and so often tragically in our own
hearts and minds. Why the eternal Son of
the Father isn’t recognized by everyone right away, when he has come into the
world. Why bad things keep happening to
good people, why even in us, after we
have put our faith in Christ alone, we feel resistance and temptation and
disobedience both externally and internally, in the world, in our own hearts and
minds—all the rest. It doesn’t make any
sense! Why doesn’t God just act? Let’s
call down fire from heaven and destroy these Samaritans! Pull up the weeds right now by the roots, to
purify the field. Let’s get the job
done!
But then, catching a breath, perhaps we think of the story of our own
lives. How messy we all are. Faithful and rebellious. Brave and fearful. So much of the time two steps forward and
then one back. Or even one step forward
and then two back. Seeking to hold onto
Christ and trust in him alone, but so reluctant to let go of the gods and
goddesses of this world. So, gains and
losses. A lot of moments along the way
when anybody looking at me would think, “now that’s a weed for sure.” And maybe sometimes I look at myself in the
mirror and see nothing but a weed myself.
We can be so swift to judge others and so swift to judge ourselves. So again, a word about being thankful from
the bottom of my heart that God is as patient as he is with me, as I do my best
to sort things out. And certainly as I
seek to be one of his disciples and ministers, and we are here this morning all
of us with those disciples, the ones Jesus sends on ahead of him to proclaim
the news, to seek to find in my own mind and heart as well a space for
patience.
The Lord is patient. That’s the
key and the take-away. And it is his
will that those who would live in him would share that patience. To
say, “Those folks over at St. Andrew’s, my goodness: how patient they are with
one another. You don’t hear them praying
God to send down “fire from heaven” whenever they find themselves in difficult
situations. They have their opinions,
for sure, their personal preferences and inclination. They have their goals and priorities, their hopes
and dreams and programs and plans. But
they know also that it’s God’s timing that matters, that he rules over days and
seasons and generations. And so there is
this sense of graciousness.
Forebearance. Generosity.
To be clear, this doesn’t deny the reality of evil, and it doesn’t
undermine the absolute righteousness of God’s justice. In the words of the hymn, “God is working his
purpose out.” No question about that. The
Scripture is clear that God hates sin, and that’s not too strong a word: that he is unalterably opposed to every evil,
and that his patience isn’t an everlasting patience. But those are his judgments, and we can come to know what they are and what they
will be as we read his Word and seek in our hearts and minds and lives to follow
the direction of his word and the pattern of the life and death and
resurrection of Jesus. For this hour we
are to take a deep breath, and remember that he’s in charge, and we
aren’t. Trusting him to care for the
whole field of the kingdom, even the weediest looking sprout in the garden,
treating even the weediest weed as though it might eventually in this growing
season show itself to be not to have been a weed at all, but good growth--trusting
that in God’s own good time every last precious plant grown from the seed of
the Gospel will be seen and known and brought safe to his storehouse.
