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The Tenth Sunday After Pentecost
Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, who knowest our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion, we beseech thee, upon our infirmities, and those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask, mercifully give us for the worthiness of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Proper 11)
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The Tenth Sunday After Pentecost
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Scripture citation(s): Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
A Sermon by
Fr. Stafford
on
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
✛
A Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
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“…The righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father…”
Today’s Gospel is composed of three familiar parables: the wheat and the tares (10.24-30); the mustard seed (10.31-32); and the leaven (10.33); examples of what I irreverently term “home and garden teachings.” They are intended to illustrate something about the kingdom of heaven, which we need to remember is a central theme in Matthew; Jesus not only bringing the kingdom of God but Jesus also being God’s kingdom come amongst us!
So, in reading Matthew, we need to bear in mind an important and essential piece of theology; that the long awaited kingdom of heaven is at last and forever quietly amongst us, present in this age and time of 2008 but also hidden and obscured, except to those who live by faith. Matthew, therefore, is inviting us as hearers and readers of the Word of God to live by faith in the kingdom Christ brings and is.
Now, what does it mean to live by faith?
Let’s explore that.
I would answer that to live by faith is to walk in the way of mercy, forgiveness, and peace – what Scripture calls the love of God; synonymous, also, with eternal life, which is different than living forever, eternity in the sense of forever, being something else.
In other words, to live by faith, for the believer, is to follow or imitate Christ’s example of loving God, self, and neighbor as one through mercy, forgiveness, and peace; a process by which a person is transformed or raised to new life. That is what we, as Christians, believe.
In the kingdom of this world, all get caught-up in un-love (ref. to ee cummings); a captivity, wherein we walk by fear, violence, and death and not by mercy, forgiveness, and peace. Christ has given the world an alternative to un-love. This new way doesn’t take us out of the world; that would be magic. Instead, our Lord gives us the way of the cross; mercy, forgiveness, and peace, in other words, as a new and liberating means of life; divine love; a power and mystery in which and to which Christ alone is perfectly faithful for us, making us, in effect, residents of two kingdoms at once; one a world into which we are born and another, a world and homeland into which we are adopted solely by divine sacrifice and charity.
The parable of the wheat and tares is about this dual citizenship that belies and conscripts the human condition, not only for the believer, but for any one who seeks after righteousness. It is a duality that bespeaks a dilemma, the dilemma being our precarious and continual teeter-tottering between heaven and hell, good and evil, God’s kingdom and the kingdom of this world. And, the parable tells us something very interesting and perhaps perplexing.
Any farmer or gardener worth their salt will state what needs to be done with weeds. They are a problem that threatens the whole, so either eradicate or control them!
For example, during the summer months growing up in Minneapolis, I can remember my mother on Saturdays armed with a kitchen knife, outside, digging up dandelions and crab grass from our lawn, piles of weeds assembled alongside her as she moved across the grass. To me this looked like work, but she said she enjoyed it. And, in looking back, I now recognize her hands-on efforts at weed elimination and control as being a labor of love for my father, sister, and myself, as well as, an attempt to keep up the appearance of our property, as best she could.
My mother died many years ago, and when it came time much later to sell the house and move my father into a retirement setting, I couldn’t help but take a final look at the lawn my mother had worked so hard to keep free of weeds. It was an unsightly disaster.
What happened is that the weeds, over the course of time, had won-out, achieving a silent victory when no one was there to do what needed to be done, when no one was looking or caring; my mother’s hard work and constant effort forgotten and overturned; the yard a sea of weeds; a reminder that there are some things in life we cannot always prevent, fix, or overcome.
The Gospel this morning renders some surprising advice regarding weeds and our powerlessness and life’s unmanageability, to which all is and are subject in the kingdom of this world. It tells us to leave the weeds alone, and let wheat and tares grow together. How contradictory this seems to any farmer or gardener who wants a full and abundant harvest, or to any home owner who wants an immaculate and ordered yard, or to any righteous person seeking the satisfaction of spiritual purity and justification.
Does this parable mean we have no responsibility, no effort or duty in life to tackle some tough and thorny matters? No, it is not about avoiding what we by conscience can and must do. Nor, is it an excuse to look the other way or cast a blind eye when something is wrong and needs to be righted. In no way is it about excusing evil or suffering. Neither Christ nor Matthew, this morning, let us off the hook of conscience and moral action.
What, then, is the parable saying about that teeter-totter we must ride as citizens of two kingdoms which are quite different and much opposed to one another?
The parable says, mercy, forgiveness, and peace, co-exist with fear, violence, and death. The kingdom of heaven, in other words, shares the same soil as the kingdom of this world, their roots entwined; a paradox we see exemplified in the soil of Calvary and the Crucified One of God, where also weeds win-out!
But, more importantly, as the parable attests, tares cannot ultimately triumph. Powerlessness and life’s unmanageability, each in its many and varied personal forms, cannot surmount God’s efforts and purpose for the creation which the Almighty cannot and will not abandon.
That’s the truth of the parable; that it is God, in the end, not man, who judges and saves! Redemption/salvation, call it what you will, is God’s doing, God’s great and unexpected, generous good gift, the hidden vivacity of Divine caritas/charity and faithfulness; eternal life, exemplified in the Cross and Resurrection of the Christ, who dies so that we may live forever with him in his Father’s keeping; and, showing us that love in the end, which our Lord, a second Adam, brings and is, is a mystery surpassing human understanding, a power greater than un-love.
The parable of the wheat and tares issues therefore a word of caution; that loving is sometimes very, very difficult, if not, at times impossible. It warns us against reacting; situations in which we might conclude wrongly and act hastily, like, for example, soldiers who destroy a village in order to save it.
Yet, that is precisely what we at times do in life; react rather than respond, uproot, cast out, or plow under people, groups, cultures, or ideas whose contagion we fear, and over and against whom we can identify ourselves as a more worthy or more powerful individual or group. This lack of charity is little more than fear, violence, and death in a masquerade of false sacrifice and innocent victims.
Do you, I wonder, hear me talking about our selves, our families, this parish, the Anglican Communion, New York City, or the United States?
I am! I am speaking of people and places, things and events, where the roots of God’s kingdom and our captivity to un-love are mixed, tangled together and growing in the same soil; and situations where loving can be exceedingly arduous, frustrated, dangerous, and sadly, sometimes, impossible; people, places, things, and events where weeds can and do grow in profusion, not just in the cracks but in the wide fields of life, and where, contrary to our effort, tares can and do get control of us, rendering us powerless, life unmanageable.
Herein, I am reminded of Honor Moore’s sensitive and compelling memoir, The Bishop’s Daughter, (Norton), which is a biography of her father, Paul, the late, much beloved and oft times controversial Bishop of this diocese, and her mother Jenny, as well as an autobiography of the author herself. It is, I think, a brilliant and compelling story about a lot of things, especially how tares/weeds get in the way of loving, breaking us; fracturing our hopes; as they do in each and every life in this earthly kingdom in which so many are lost for love. Honor tells how essential and how difficult the spiritual quest for love is, and how wonderfully we are also surprised by love, our world – its people, places, things and events, weeds and all – being hidden in Christ’s life and resurrection triumph of God’s mercy, forgiveness, and peace; the kingdom of heaven unexpectedly sometimes breaking-out and enflaming our hearts, like the fire of Pentecost, for example, upon the heads of the Apostles.
It is no wonder, in a world such as ours where weeds appear to win-out, as oft they do, that it is easy to lose heart and to fall aside as believers, and retreat into the darkness of whatever. That is why Jesus gives us the story of the mustard seed; encouragement that something so small and seemingly unimportant as a mustard seed is capable of producing a shrub of great size: the kingdom of heaven, in other words being like that mustard seed; seemingly, small and insignificant, but, do not underestimate its potential, its power.
Or, as in the example of leaven, the kingdom of heaven is capable of amazing and abundant transformation, wherein the inconspicuous, power of God hidden within creation, makes of us and this world something we and it are not, like leaven does as a catalyst in the metamorphosis of dough to life-giving bread.
Since Jesus is a carpenter by trade, let me compliment today’s Gospel with one more story, a woodworker’s tale! Think of the kingdom of heaven as being like a staircase. But, instead of knowing ahead of time what the complete staircase looks like in all its magnificence and glory, we see only three small steps. Call them mercy, forgiveness, and peace. Faithfulness to the Builder tells us to make every effort to take those three steps. In so doing, what lies before/ahead of us emerges, appearing not in one sweeping revelation of the whole but of a portion, as bits and pieces, hints and glimpses; different from how we our selves would build it, yet capable and strong enough to bear us onward as we walk our way to a destination hoped for, provided for us, and beyond our imagining as well.
Little steps, I am saying in this life, little actions count; like wheat growing amidst tares, or the miniscule speck of a mustard seed, or like yeast in dough; simple actions and attitudes of love, mercy, and forgiveness, in other words, are capable of producing results that can and do matter, sometimes asking of us everything, love’s sacrifice, the final and true always being in the hand and judgment of our Creator, whose Word is made flesh, revealed in Christ’s mercy, forgiveness, and peace.
Living by faith or the way of the cross, is simple but not easy. So remember that we strive for faithfulness not perfection in our lives and in a world, where the soil is not as weed-free as we would like or expect it to be; as, for example in the lives of Paul and Jenny Moore, or Honor, or any of the twelve apostles, or each and everyone of us here today.
Two kingdoms exist in common soil; the kingdom of this world growing through self-will run riot, the kingdom of heaven growing with the help and assistance of what the Church terms God’s grace. “Grace changes us” says American author and devout Roman Catholic, Flannery O’Conner. “…And change” she goes on to say “…is painful.” Yet, grace as repentance, amendment of life, and gratitude, painful as it may be at times, will make of us who we are not, and shall in the end that is also our re-beginning (ref. to ee cummings) empower us to “…shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of …[our] Father…” (10.43)!
Thanks be to God!
