It was too hard to choose just one
text this week, because there’s an abundance of riches in the assigned readings
for today. So I used the gorgeous thoughts of Psalm 139, which is among my
favorites, in our prayer time. The lesson from one of the letters in the New
Testament (Epistle), Romans, talked about how the whole creation is just
waiting for God to do a new thing. All of creation wants to be restored. The
text from Genesis starts the whole series of stories about Jacob, whose name is
later changed to Israel. A chapter or so earlier, he is born fighting his twin
for being the firstborn; when they were grown he cheated his brother out of
firstborn’s rights, and tricked his father to get the firstborn’s blessing.
He’s a twister and a trickster; but after this latest trick, he’s sent away for
his own safety. This text about him sleeping on the ground with a stone for a
pillow is the first night Jacob sleeps alone and away from his family, and for
some reason God comes to him in the first of several encounters. This cheater
and twister recognizes the presence of God and sets up some stones as a marker
for his experience of God right there. But really folks, wherever he had slept
God was going to talk with him that night. God had to deal with Jacob, and any place
on this holy creation would do.
The text
from Matthew’s telling of the story of Jesus is another parable about the
kindom of God, which starts out a lot like last week’s parable - a sower sows a
field with good wheat seed. Once again, the setting is a familiar agricultural
one. But also once again, the sower
doesn’t act like a good farmer, and surprises us. Last week, the sower scatters
seeds of the gospel over all kinds of land that seems not receptive. This week,
an enemy of the sower secretly comes and tosses a bunch of weed seeds, and they
all start to grow up together. And the sower says “let them grow.” He doesn’t make his workers go pull weeds,
but lets it be until the end times, when the angels will do the sorting.
So there’s
a couple themes going on in these texts -
that of God being everywhere on our planet - like wherever Jacob slept
that night, and that there’s nowhere we can ever go that’s away from God’s
presence and love. God fills all creation, this precious planet that we were made
from handmade for, this earth that we live on, grow on, and care for. All of this is God’s - God made it, God called it good, including
us. It would also be true on Mars or Venus, or even Pluto, which I hear is a planet again….. One geographic
place is not more holy than any other; our living rooms and kitchens are holy
when we encounter God there. Our camps under the tree and stars, our ventures
to lakes and rivers. We don’t have to be in a certain building to worship God.
The other theme seems to be that God
is not limited by what we think is the right thing to do, or what we judge to
be the good. God chooses this trickster and cheater Jacob, who goes on to trick
some more folks and be tricked himself, even as God continues to work with him.
And the sower in Jesus’ story would not get our kudos for his gardening
methods, letting the bad & good exist together.
I’ve struggled with this parable
most of my life, because it hasn’t seemed to make sense to me that the realm of
God, the kindom of God, would be good wheat and bad growing together. Of course, my own conservative religious
upbringing tended to put things into clear categories - this is right, that is
wrong; this is the correct view about salvation, and those others are wrong
(only we called them unbiblical, because we were the only ones who were
biblical). These people do the right things,those people don’t. These people
look like good people are supposed to, and those don’t. You either are saved in the correct way and go to
heaven, or you’re not and go to hell. The sower should have separated the wheat
and the weeds right away, and we should hang with other wheat people and avoid
the weed people. My home church wouldn’t even let my youth group camp with
another church’s youth group because their pastor didn’t have the right
theology about when Jesus is coming back - they must have had other errors, if
they were wrong on that!
It was difficult for the younger me
to understand how people who were good church people could also be mean; and I
saw them be mean, and didn’t know how to feel about it. I tried to root out
every sin the preachers and Sunday School teachers described from my life, and assumed that’s
what good Christians did. I could well have ended up in the right-wing kind of
Christian practice we see on TV, very hateful to those who believe differently,
and intolerant of those who didn’t agree with my point of view.
Let me share some stories of my
gentle Dad and how he was a good example of how an adult seeks to make their
own decisions about things and look beneath the surface. In High School, I hung
around with the Jesus People, hippies who found God. We had a weekly Friday
night coffee house with about 10 guys playing guitar and singing new Christian
songs and giving testimonies. And we had Bible studies weekly, too. So I
invited all these blue jean wearing, long haired hippies with Jesus stickers
all over their cars, to hold the Bible Study at my house one time. My parents
were a bit freaked by the idea, and weren’t sure what they felt about me
hanging out with these kinds of people. But dad said yes - he dressed in his
church suit and tie; and with his Bible under one arm, he greeted and shook
hands with each person who came in the door that night. He stayed in our study,
towards the back, and my friends were cool with it. Afterwards, he said, “Those guys know their
Bible, Becky.” He changed his mind about these young folks who didn’t dress
right or look right or sing the hymns from the hymnal - they did love God.
Later, off at college, I began
worshipping at a local Presbyterian church. You know that I started off at a
Bible college, right? I transferred and graduated from Wheaton College later,
but started at a fundamentalist Bible college where we all majored in Bible. They
approved this Presbyterian church for us to attend, so you know it was a
conservative church. I told my parents I was going to a Presbyterian and not a
Baptist Church, gasp gasp, and a couple weekends later my Dad drove up and
attended worship with me to see if I was getting too weird. Afterwards, I
introduced him to the associate pastor who led the college group, and dad
quizzed him a bit. And he decided that
Presbyterians were okay, they did love God.
Dad died before I graduated, but
I’ve kept up his example of seeing past externals to whether people love God.
We all judge, we can’t help it. We notice differences. And if we’re insecure,
someone with a difference can be seen as challenging or criticizing what we
hold as true, and can’t get past it. (And
sometimes they do challenge and
critique, and loudly.) I’ve been the one judged - One of my daughter’s little
girlfriends, 1st grade or so, came to play at our house in Oct when we had
Halloween decorations up - her mom never let her come back because her church
taught that Halloween was evil. Another of her girlfriends, in their teens now,
was surprised that we could be Christian and Democrats, because her church
preached that a true Christian had to be Republican. That time, they stayed
friends anyway.
I had begun a call as a college
chaplain one month before 9-11 happened, and in the Norfolk area - huge Navy
area, lots of military connections. The Isamic Center where Muslim students worshiped was vandalized, and the
chaplains began to lead on understanding faiths. Many students there were from
countries where Islam was the main faith, and they had a student group like
Christian groups did. I met some devout and God-loving people that challenged
my knowledge of Muslims, and when they invited us to a supper after dark in
Ramadan, me and my children attended and learned.
I have met people who are gay and
lesbian Christians, and found them lovers of God, and doing service to their
neighborhoods that few would undertake. The old me would have been totally
shocked. I’ve had talks with Buddhist students and adults, and while Buddha is
not considered divine, I found the followers of this path to be good people and
devoted to the same search for understanding as mine, and involved bettering
the world the same as we do in kindly ways. I don’t understand the desire to
get tattoos, but my son has a whole armfull, and lots of people his age do -
and they are also good and kind people, and many of them love God.
I guess if God had let me go pull
weeds when I was younger, I would have pulled a lot of wheat without knowing
it. My judgement between wheat and weeds was faulty; I’m glad it will be the
angels that do it and not me. There have been some people along the line that
have thought I was a weed, and would have rooted me out. I’m glad they weren’t
in charge of weeding either.
So what are we to do, friends, with
this field of mixed wheat and weeds, if we can’t pull out the weeds? The best
sermon I ever heard on this parable ended like this - “The only answer is,
“Grow into the fullness of our “wheatness,” and PLANT MORE WHEAT.” So in this
world where we live, look for the common love of God, and leave judging to the
angels! AMEN.
No comments:
Post a Comment