8 Pentecost, 26-A: The ultimate healing

Lectionary: Wisdom of Solomon 12:13, 16-19; Psalm 86:11-17; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30,36-43 

As happens, the Spirit spoke a few edits as I gave this sermon live. I'd recommend this video on our YouTube channel instead of the pre-recorded below...  V+

En el nombre de Dios: creador, redentor y santificador.... In the name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.

Good news in our gospel today, eh? Actually, it is, if we have ears to hear. 

Last week, I mentioned that we often hear biblical stories the way the church that raised us taught us to hear them. Our lectionary today offers us a few concepts we were raised to find familiar, and we will reflect on them from a Biblically grounded perspective.

Our Collect reflects an early Christian belief that we are unworthy and dare not ask God for mercy. This sense of unworthiness derives from Augustine of Hippo’s 3rd century doctrine of original sin - that we are born in a state of sin. This doctrine was later strengthened and expanded by John Calvin and other Reformers in the 15th century, and sadly, it survives and thrives in much of Christianity today. I say sadly, because it is not a biblical teaching.

As Episcopalians, you may cling to this teaching if you choose to, but we engage with the biblical teaching that we are born in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:27). The world may challenge and tempt us away from that, but God stands steadfastly with us, reminding us of the truth of who we are and whose we are, continually guiding us back to our created state of original goodness - which is how redemption works.

Jesus directly addresses the issue of worthiness in the parable of the wheat and weeds. In Jesus’ time, you could sabotage a harvest of wheat by throwing in the seeds of bearded darnell, a weed-grain that looks a lot like wheat but is bitter and toxic in its maturity. The roots of this weed eventually wind together with the roots of the wheat. Once that happens, it is impossible to remove until the threshing.

Experienced field hands knew that the logical thing to do would be to pull out the weeds quickly so they don’t steal soil space and nutrients from the grain. But Jesus’ parable, like all parables, surprises. The farmer instructs them to let the wheat and the weeds grow together. At harvest time, they will be separated by the reapers, not the field hands, and dealt with according to the will of the farmer. This is Jesus clarifying that the separation of the weeds from the wheat is a divine task, not a human one.

Much of the commentary and discussion about this parable talk about the judgment of God being terrible - the bad weeds (people) being thrown into fire with weeping and gnashing of teeth, and they warn us that God’s justice for us is like that. In his life and ministry, however, Jesus demonstrated a loving, forgiving, humble character. When the law would have allowed Jesus to punish sin, he didn’t. Instead, he forgave people their sins and clarified that the law was meant to serve and benefit humans, not the other way around. (Mk 2:27)

God’s commitment is to reconcile all people (Isa 49:6), even those who are evil, which, btw, doesn’t mean bad. Evil persons are those who, by their intention or actions, cause division, harm, or sadness; those who build systems that make the burdens of others heavy or oppressive. They may do bad things, but they are not bad.

Jesus demonstrated this reconciling nature of God by calling Matthew, a tax collector, the very definition of an evil person, to be a disciple, transforming him into an apostle, and what a beautiful, hopeful demonstration that is! As for us, we acknowledge in our Catechism that it is also our mission to “restore all people, the wheat and the weeds, “to unity with God and each other in Christ." (Book of Common Prayer, p 855)

In this parable, Jesus is instructing us to live together, being cautious of our judgment. We tend to judge the wheat as good and the weeds as bad, but we need to be careful, because we’re often wrong.

From my grandmother, who was an herbalist, I learned that dandelions are highly nutritious: the flowers, the leaves, and the roots. They are also the first food of pollinators every Spring. It has always shocked me that people will go to such great lengths to eliminate this nutritious plant from their yards, even resorting to known cancer-causing chemicals to destroy them, prioritizing instead manicured grass, which, though pretty, offers nothing of value to humans or pollinators.

Historically, we have also labeled whole groups of people as bad weeds, haven’t we? Currently, LGBTQIA2S+ people, immigrants, women, people of color, and the poor are at the top of our lists.

Jesus teaches us that the weeds will be separated from the wheat by divine action, not ours. When the weeds are separated out, they will be reborn in God because that is the love and mercy of God: to retrieve all that is lost, broken, or damaged and redeem it – bringing new life from death.

We must remember that the weeds are also created by God, and the people deemed to be weeds are also the dwelling places of the presence of God. They may be lost, to be sure, but we know how Jesus felt about leaving the many to go after even one who is lost. So, Jesus says, the wheat and the weeds must live together, entwined by the roots of our common humanity, because God seeks to redeem and reconcile all.

That doesn’t always happen in our lifetimes, as we well know. Sometimes the weeds die in their evil state, unrepentant and still doing harm. Establishing boundaries that protect us from their evil answers Jesus’ call to honor and respect ourselves. As I often say, we may have to let Jesus accomplish the redemption in the next life, when our efforts have failed, which is one reason why praying for the dead matters.

Jesus says, when the angels of God separate the wheat from the weeds, the weeds will be thrown into the furnace of fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This powerful portion of Jesus’ teaching pierces the very heart of the apocalyptic tradition in Judaism, a tradition that was carried into Christianity as fire and brimstone threats - but that misunderstands the tradition.

First, let’s consider how fire is used in the Bible. There’s the famously burning bush through which God spoke to Moses (Ex 3:1), and the “appearance of the glory of God was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain for all the people to see.” (Ex 24: 17) In Luke 3:16, John the Baptist declared that the Messiah would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Fire is biblical language for the presence of God. When the weeds are thrown into the fire, they are thrown into the presence of God where, of course, there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth because those who believe in their own power will resist dying to self, but in the presence of God, who is love, the revelation of the harm they have done will leave them full of remorse as their systems of denial and justification fail, and they know the fullness of their guilt.

This is why we continually repent - which simply means change our course, change what we’re doing, thinking, or believing - and return to God as our Baptismal vows call us to do. Mercifully, God responds by doing what God always does – forgiving us, loving us, and redirecting us, giving us another chance to live the lives of love we were created to live.

When we are in the presence of God, no matter how unworthy we might have been taught to feel, the pervasiveness of God’s love saturates us, and we can only - finally - love back. It is the ultimate healing. It is reconciliation.

Then, as the parable says, those who have been reconciled back into right relationship in the fire of the divine presence will shine like the sun in the kingdom of God. God’s plan of redemptive, reconciling love for the whole world is reassuring, encouraging, healing, and loving, not threatening.

What if we approach our loving, merciful God, and ask God to heal our brokenness – brokenness we know we have, and brokenness we don’t yet know we have. What if we actually trusted God’s plan of salvation to make us and everyone whole? What if we lived as Jesus showed us how to live, in the midst of yet another harsh and destructive historical moment?

We can do this only through the power of the love of God in Christ who dwells in us, guiding our every step. 

I close with a prayer I adapted from our Noonday Prayer service (BCP, 107). Let us pray. Redeeming God, you have sent your Holy Spirit into our hearts, to direct and serve us according to your will, to comfort us in all our afflictions, to defend us from error, and to lead us into all truth. We thank you and bless you for steadfastly loving and caring for us in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

7 Pentecost, 26-A: Sower, seed, and fruit

Lectionary: Isaiah 55:10-13; Psalm 65: (1-8), 9-14; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

En el nombre de Dios: creador, redentor y santificador.... In the name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.

One of my favorite things about Scripture is that every time you read it, there is a new revelation. Underlying that, for most of us, is that we have been taught to hear, understand, and visualize the stories in a particular way - the way the church that raised us imparted to us.

I want to note that when I say “we” throughout this sermon, I mean us as individuals, us as a parish community, and us as the body of Christ, the Church.

The Lockwood window at EEC

Historically agreed upon visual images, like those in our stained-glass windows, along with traditional ways of understanding Biblical stories, develop as we reflect on our story of salvation. That isn’t a bad thing, as long as we remember that the revelation of God to humankind is continual, so when we cling only to traditional images or understanding we restrict God’s ongoing activity meant to enable us to grow and mature in our faith and relationships with God, one another, and our neighbors.

When we hear the Parable of the Sower, most of us were taught to picture God as the sower and ourselves as the soil. We tend to listen, asking ourselves, am I good soil? Which translates to, am I a good person?

So, let’s expand the window through which we are looking at this. Our gospel reading starts with the words “that same day,” which refers to what has just happened, which is that the Pharisees have denounced Jesus as a law-breaker because he healed a man on the Sabbath, allowed his hungry disciples to pluck grain on the Sabbath, and healed a demoniac - they say - by the power of Beelzebul.

Jesus responds to these accusations by calling the Pharisees a “brood of vipers” and an” evil generation.” Ya gotta love Jesus’ candor! Yet, despite the overt opposition of the religious leadership, huge crowds continue to gather to hear Jesus, who, in today’s gospel, tells them the Parable of the Sower, which, as the gospel writer says, teaches them many things.

In this parable, Jesus describes the sower as an extravagant gardener who casts seeds everywhere: on soil, pavement, into thorns…everywhere. The sower tosses the seeds out in such a way that it’s possible new life might take root in the unlikeliest of places, something anyone who has seen nature overtake a ruin can affirm.

The traditional approach to this parable is that God is the extravagant sower, sending out seeds of new life into the world, knowing that some won’t live at all, some will live a short life, and some will last and produce fruit. The seeds are traditionally understood to be God’s plan for new life on the earth, and we are the places where those seeds land.

That’s a perfectly legitimate approach. But what if one of the many things Jesus’ parable teaches us is that we are also the sowers of these seeds? Isn’t God already in us, working through us in the world? If we’re waiting for God to act, perhaps we don’t have ears to hear God asking us to act - to be extravagant planters of new life, distributors of God’s grace in the world.

Another of the many things the parable teaches us may be that we are not one of those places the seeds land; we are all of them, at different times in our lives. Perhaps each place: the path, the rocky soil, and the thorns are steps we take toward becoming good soil. I don’t know about you, but I can identify the many times when each of those places was true in my life. It hasn’t been a straight path for me, but a dynamic one, always heading toward becoming rich, receptive soil for God.

Finally, what if we are also the seeds being scattered? We all carry within us unseen potential. Well, unseen by us but known to God.

When we allow God to move in and through us, we often see the outcomes of grace. For example, Emmanuel has had a part in forming many ordained people. It’s a charism that lives among us, one the bishop has noted too, btw. We then send those persons into the world to serve using the fruits of the gifts we helped them discover and nourish.

On an individual level, whenever we respond to a person or situation, we bring either the values of God or the values of the world into play. The choice is always ours. The outcomes of those choices are pretty easy to find. Just take a look at yours and others’ social media.

In his time, Jesus honored and included those traditionally ostracized by religion and society: women, foreigners, and perfidious tax collectors. Emmanuel follows Jesus’ example of this in our time in various ways: 1) raising money to provide menstrual products through our Food Center, because they have become expensive and hard to get for those on assistance, enabling us to respect the dignity of women; 2) loving and serving our foreign-born, immigrant neighbors through our Light to the Nations ministry, led by Susanna+ and her team; and 3) welcoming into our parish family those whom other churches and society cast out because of whom they love or how they identify in all their intersectionality, because we recognize in them the beautiful diversity of all children of God.

Jesus was a religious rebel who challenged the traditional understanding of his time, showing us how to do it in our time. As it was for Jesus then, so it is for us now: there will be opposition to upsetting the status quo by those who establish and profit from it - in societal and religious systems - but there are crowds gathering even now, around our country and around the world, who are hungry for liberty from oppression and genocide; who seek justice and healing for victims of crime; and who desire peace and the pursuit of happiness in their everyday lives.

Many of us find ourselves among these crowds. That’s no accident. It’s part of God’s plan of love.

Because of Jesus, we live uniquely and miraculously in the flesh and in the Spirit. St. Paul got that only partly right in his letter, but that’s OK. God’s revelation is continuous and St. Paul gave us a good start.

In this unique flesh-and-spirit reality of ours, we come to know and understand what we ought to do by that same Spirit who dwells in us, fills us with grace, and empowers us through our faith to accomplish them. As our Bishop said in his recent message in the diocesan e-news: “The Spirit forever calls us beyond what is familiar, beyond what is comfortable, and beyond what is safe, into the holy work of bearing witness to God’s justice, mercy, and reconciling love.” (Art: Pentecost by El Greco)

That is our call, and some of us will produce huge amounts of divine fruit in our lives - like Archbishop Desmond Tutu or Mother Theresa. Some will produce a bit less, and some will produce one small fruit in their whole life.

All of these contributions are of value to God. Life isn’t a competition. It’s a cooperation.

What happens to one of us, happens to all of us. That can be good news or bad news, depending on whether we choose to bring the values of God or the values of the world, which are hostile to God, into play.

Each time we make this choice, it helps to remember that we were once the hardened footpath, the rocky ground, or among the thorns, and God led us to become good soil, often by sending a neighbor to reach a helping hand out to us. It helps to remember that God chooses us to throw seeds of love extravagantly, the way God does, so that love and new life might take root and grow in the unlikeliest of places...  in the unlikeliest of people. It helps to remember that we are all divine fruit - God’s cherished beloveds in the world.

Let us pray: God of extravagant love, give us the courage to be like you: lavish sowers of your seeds of love in the world. Give us ears to hear and understand, and by your Spirit, give us grace to see with your divine eyes, that we may recognize the goodness you proclaimed is in all you have created. You have chosen and empowered us by your Holy Spirit. May our fruit acknowledge the truth that we and all creation are in a continual process of sanctification and reconciliation within your abundant, steadfast, and everlasting love. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.