Weeding

Matthew 13, the Parable about the wheat and the weeds growing together:

         there’s more to it than meets the eye.

 

When it comes down to it, the parables are about Jesus.

And he tells them to his disciples in order to bring them into awareness 

         of the spiritual process he is working in them.

 

They most often start with “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…”

Here, the Kingdom of Heaven is live a man who planted wheat, 

but his enemy added seeds for the weed often called darnel. 

 

Initially when all the seed sprouted, 

the wheat and the weeds looked the same.

But when the plants got big enough to start producing grain, 

then the wheat could be distinguished from the darnel.

Good and bad mixed together, 

profitable and unprofitable, 

wheat that can become useful for bread and nourishment 

and darnel that gives no nourishment, is worthless and useless.

 

Typically our thought, as expressed by the farm hands in this story,

         is about what can we do to get rid of the darnel, 

       so that just the beneficial wheat is left.

That’s what the slaves ask the householder.

 

But the Kingdom of Heaven is like the landowner, the one who sowed the seed, 

and he says wait.  

He is not going to risk destroying the beneficial along with the worthless, 

destroying the life nourishing along with the harmful.

It all belongs;

         and one could even say 

                  that the enemy’s action actually serves a purpose.

         It shows the reality about what all is included in creation:

                  the gentle breeze and the hurricane,

                  the butterfly and the mosquito.

Only at the end will it all get sorted out.

 

I am going to suggest to you that this parable 

         is not about a moral judgment 

       that separates the good people from the bad people.

The reason for that:

In the parable last week that immediately preceded this one in Matthew 13

the ground, the soil represented

the hearts of the people hearing the seed of the word of the Gospel.

Today’s parable is placed right after that, 

      and so there are intentional connections and parallels.

 

Jesus is the sower, proclaiming the Kingdom.

We are the soil in which grows the Word of the Kingdom 

and also words which are worthless, withering, 

diminishing to the soul growing in our soil.

The growth of the seedlings 

         is either for the expansion of the Kingdom within us, 

or for the diminishment and frustration of fruitless labor within us,

                what sucks the life out of us.

 

We look on the one hand at what in our lives promotes 

life and growth and goodness and compassion and love 

and other such characteristics of the Kingdom of Heaven,

and on the other hand we look at what in our lives is diminishment,

is choosing death instead of life, is a contraction of the heart.

If we are honest, we may see that we are not at all successful 

                  in making the spiritually healthy choices,

          but that which is life-giving is a gift.

 

Now, weeds grow whether intentionally planted or naturally occurring.

         Weeds are ubiquitous and persistent.

Both wheat and weeds grow together within our hearts, 

                                                      and we are in need of help.

But can we keep our hands off and wait for the grace to work in our lives?

         Or are we going to pull up what WE guess are the weeds?

 

In last Sunday’s gospel the parable of the sower is a parable of grace, 

about the abundance of grain produced 

beyond the capabilities of each stalk of wheat, 

the abundance of fruit produced beyond human capabilities –

                thirty, sixty, one hundredfold.

 

But instead of living in this grace,

our tendency is to want to manage our own salvation,

to deal with what is unfruitful and harmful in our lives ourselves,

through self-improvement programs, 

working our own transformation,  

and putting it all in moralistic frameworks.

 

This, we may see, has limited success

and more often than not results in a lot of self-condemnation.

       “I failed, I couldn’t change myself.”

And we are back to Romans 7 from a couple of weeks ago,

                the conundrum over the propensity to sin.

- And the trouble with self-condemnation is that it often overflows 

into judgmental-ism about others, making it doubly noxious. - 

 

So we identify ourselves with our inner struggles, 

what we may call noxious weeds,                  

       but this is not the Kingdom of God.

 

If Jesus is the farmer, 

then what does he do to save, heal, transform, liberate the situation?

He purifies the hearts of his own.

                  Where do I see that in this reading?

We need to look at some other passages in Matthew’s Gospel.

 

Matthew identifies Jesus right from the beginning as the One who purifies.

 

In the 3^rd chapter John the Baptist describes Jesus 

as the one who baptizes with fire in contrast to John’s water baptism.

 

         “His winnowing fork is in his hand,” John the Baptist says in Mt 3:12, 

“and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing floor 

and will gather his wheat into the barn; 

but the chaff he will thoroughly consume with unquenchable fire.”

 

The process of purification in our lives gets done 

finally, thoroughly and with great purity 

                         in a poof, a flash of divine radiance,

if not in this life time, 

then when we come face to face with the Divine Radiance

                   in our last dying breath, 

         and that burden is eternally lifted .

 

Now we may have a little trouble with this, 

because of such deep involvement that we have had 

with this matter of suffering over the weeds in our lives.

 

If this is where we have had our self-identity all tied up, 

then we will actually have a hard time letting go of the suffering.

 

Think about this in your own life – 

         what events have indelibly defined you?

                                    marked your identity from that time forward?

Very often it is those events that caused us much suffering.

 

More than once Jesus had to ask a person who came to him for healing 

if they really wanted to be healed, 

if they really wanted to let go of their suffering.

If they said yes, then poof, it was done.  

They were healed, and life had suddenly changed radically for them.  

No more identity with lying by the Pool of Bethesda for 38 years, 

no more blind begging by the side of the road in Jericho.

Jesus baptizes us with a fire that cleans out the chaff in our lives.

 

But this is not a fire to fear, unless we are afraid of a shift in our identity.

The chaff, the weeds are about our self identity.

         We may discover that what we have built our self-identity around 

       is what gets burned up 

       when Jesus shows up with all his fiery radiance.

 

The fire baptism of Jesus gives us a new identity in him.

 

This is what Paul wrote about in Romans 

         that all creation waits with eager longing 

         until we are refined by this fire baptism 

                  and realize new identity in him – as children of God.

 

John’s baptism was of repentance, action that we do.

Jesus’ baptism is of fire and the Holy Spirit.

He does all the action.  

His baptism is the sum of his irresistible work in us.

This is good news!

 

Now, this matter of the second half of today’s Gospel reading, 

the part in which the disciples ask Jesus to explain the parable.

 

The key verse in this part of the reading is verse 41.  This translation reads:

“The Son of Man will send his angels, 

and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 

(Matt. 13:42) and they will throw them into the furnace of fire…”

 

Now here is a more basic translation closer to the Greek:

“The Son of Man will send his angels, 

and they will collect out of his kingdom

all those things that are stumbling blocks, snares, traps,

and the ones operating out of lawlessness.”

                  Lawlessness, walking in the way of Torah.

 This is another way of saying they are not doing the will of the Father.

They are out of sync with the created order around them.

         They are out of harmony with the whole flow of the Spirit.

         They are, one could say, a spiritually ecological mess.

 

But the righteous, those purified by the fiery baptism of Jesus, 

will shine like the sun, 

will be ablaze in this fire with divine radiance, 

will be transfigured and appear like Jesus did in his transfiguration.

 

So what do we do with this parable?      How do we apply it to our lives?

 

This is a parable that reminds us that all is a gift of grace,

         that God has taken care of it all,

         that we can’t even come close to saving ourselves.

But can we cooperate with the Spirit of Jesus at work burning within us

         through a willingness to let go of what is noxious and weed-like 

                  when we see it rear its ugly head in our lives,

                  when we get convicted by our conscience?

 

That is, can we recognize, can we let come to conscious awareness, 

         that which is deadly in our lives,

and then turn to our Lord for dealing with it 

         and let the Spirit’s purging process work?

 

When we recognize the weeds,

         don’t ignore them, acknowledge that they are there,

         and ask for that abundant mercy 

                  which is always there for us.

 

The Kingdom of Heaven is like the One who plants good seed in his field.

         It’s all about Jesus.

 

And he says, “Wait.

        It won’t be your own action that will save you and change you to the good.

         Wait, it all will get sorted out.”

 

So where are we focusing?  What are we identifying with?

         with our problems and suffering?

         or with Jesus?

  

Archetypal Horror

 God said to Abraham, “Take your son, 

         your only son,                  Isaac,         whom you love,

and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering.”

 

Hearing again the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac

         is not what most of us would want.

Yet here it is,

         showing up on a fine summer Sunday morning

                  so that we have to look at it and not avoid it.

 

The horror of it all!

Do we really want to go there?

The horror of what is being asked by God for the testing of faith!

Would you read this to your children or grandchildren 

         as a bedtime story?

It is beyond all reasonableness.

Way beyond.

Reasonableness gets left out completely.

Is this what we’re in for – this sort of testing of faith?

 

If your mind works anything like mine does,

         one might picture some horrific real life news stories

         of aberrant parental behavior –

                  abuse and victimization and murder.

 

I’ve had to deal with that pastorally

         and it’s some of the hardest work I have ever done.

And it leaves its mark.

 

Or all we need to think of is war – 

         the bizarre way in which we send our sons and daughters off 

                  to be slaughtered 

         or to return home damaged in body and mind and spirit,

a huge cost, humanly speaking,

         with dubious rewards.

 

We have to back up and see how Abraham and Isaac come to this place;

         we have to remember, or learn, the context for this story.

Otherwise it will make no sense,

         and it will be abhorrent parental behavior of the worse kind.

 

Abraham, the one who would be known as the father of faith,

      was called by God to engage in a comprehensive spiritual process

                  of personal transformation.

Actually we all are –

         we all are called by God 

                  to engage in a comprehensive spiritual process

                           of personal transformation.

 

The thing with Abraham, 

         and why we have chapter after chapter of stories about him 

                  in the book of Genesis,

         is that Abraham listened and cooperated.

So God took him deeper and deeper into spiritual transformation

         that would bring him to his full potential as a human being.

 

First, get up and move to a whole new land and culture and people,

         God told him.

No matter that you are 75 years old.

 

And Abraham did so.

 

Look at the stars of the sky, God told him.

Countless, right?

So will your descendants be.

Despite the fact that you and Sarah have no children.

 

Well, Sarah thought and thought about that one.

If she was barren, how could they have even one child,

         let alone a vast dynasty?

There’s the old custom of the surrogate.

               Give Abraham Hagar, her slave girl, and claim the child as the heir.

Bad move.

Scripture records so clearly 

         some really rocky family dynamics that happen because of that.

                                                      (last week’s Old Testament reading)

The next step in this spiritual process – 

         the travelers at the oak of Mamre,         angels of God

bringing the message that a year from now they would have a son.

Sarah laughed, and Abraham too.  

                  She was 90 years old, for goodness sake.

Nevertheless God was true to the promise.

And they named this impossible son Isaac,

         a name that means laughter.

 

This is an important point,

         that we have expectations about how things should work,

but God’s actions are unique – the impossible happens.

God’s joke on us – and it’s a good joke, one we can laugh at too.

 

God was working with Abraham, 

         showing him a solid basis on which he could set his faith and trust.

With God the impossible happens, always surprising and unique.

 

See how the sacrifice was interwoven with all this prior history?

 

God was now taking Abraham to a place of final surrender.

Final surrender – for that is what faith ultimately is.

If Abraham was to become the prime example of faith,

         it had to come to this:

to the place where the promise remained 

         but his expectations about this were surrendered,

and there only remained the unique actions of God.

 

Isaac, God was telling Abraham, is not for you.

Our children are not our own.

 

You may be familiar with these words of the poet Khalil Gilbran:

 

“Your children are not your children. 

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. 

They come through you but not from you, 

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. 

You may give them your love but not your thoughts. 

For they have their own thoughts. 

You may house their bodies but not their souls, 

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, 

not even in your dreams.…

… You are the bows 

                  from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. 

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 

and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.…”

 

Isaac was not Abraham’s to own.

 

Isaac in fact would get up off the altar 

         as though resurrected from the dead,

and would be the replacement for Abel,

         who was slain by his brother over rivalry and envy 

                                                                        because of a sacrifice,

Abel who sacrificed to God from his flock of sheep.

And a wandering ram from someone else’s flock of sheep 

         tangled hopelessly in a thicket,

                  waiting certain death from some predator,

         now provided by the unexpected action of God.

 

Isaac would rise from the altar, 

         and walk back with Abraham.

He would have flocks and herds, and dig deep wells for water.

 

Abraham would never see with the eyes of his body 

         the descendants countless as the stars 

                           or the grains of sand on the seashore.

But he completed the spiritual process 

         of going beyond his own thoughts,

         beyond his own awareness of what could happen.

He surrendered in trust to God’s promise.

 

And we have this heritage from him.

This is a huge archetypal story of our own spiritual process of faith.

 

Are we his children of faith?

Are we willing to be taken beyond our own thoughts?

                                                      Where is God taking us?

Emerging from the pandemic 

and with the world around us in one crisis after another

                                    we have good cause to ask this question.

Where is God taking us?

         Beyond all reasonableness

Beyond all reasonableness, obviously, in our own lives,

         but where God is taking us is in this process of becoming 

                                                      our full potential as human beings.

 

God was working with Abraham, 

         showing him a solid basis 

                           on which he could truly set his faith and trust.

God shows us a solid basis in Jesus, whom Isaac foreshadows,

         the One on whom we can truly set our faith and trust,

                  Son of Man and Lamb of God.

 

Faith is a crucial and essential element of life.

 

Will you let God take you beyond

         your own littleness of reasonability?

The promise is made solid in Jesus

         and fullness of life beyond expectation

                           is waiting for you.

The Dance of the Hanging Mobile

 Now we have some work to do 

         to take in each of these three selections from Holy Scripture,

                  three rather hard readings

                  each with challenges 

                           and not easy to hear, understand or receive.

 

Let me start with this:

         A long time ago, in the last century, 

when I was the director of a Hospice program in northern Minnesota 

one of my favorite duties was the training of volunteers.

Part of the training was educating the volunteers 

         and all of us working with families 

                  in which a loved one was dying or had just died.

The purpose was to become aware of and sensitive to 

the impact on the whole family system 

that the terminal illness and death had.

 

I used the example of a mobile 

in which each piece is delicately balanced 

                                                      so that it keeps its shape.

But if you remove one piece out of the mobile, 

the whole thing goes catty-wampus.

Likewise when a death occurs in a family, 

the entire family dynamics get shifted radically. 

One can expect discord and disharmony among the family members 

as they go through the painful process of grieving 

         and adjusting to loss, 

and reconfiguring as a family again.

 

In this Gospel reading Jesus said, 

         “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? 

          I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 

      For I have come to set a man against his father, 
      and a daughter against her mother, 
      and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 
   and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.”

 

This is a hard message of the dynamics of the family system

                  out of kilter.

Jesus coming to bring discord within a family?         That’s what he said!

 

And not just a family system.

         The family is the basic unit of all cultures and societies.

         There’s the family

                  and then the tribe

                  and then the nation

                  and every level of institution in between.

And that includes the institutional Church even.

          The dynamics of equilibrium are at work in the institutional Church.

         We might call that equilibrium the status quo,

but, spiritually, that is not necessarily a good thing to maintain.

 

Consider this: the presence of Jesus

         as encountered by one member of the family 

can bring transformation, change, and healing for that one.

 

But as one member of a family changes, 

the balance of the family shifts, and the system is upset.

Systems seek equilibrium.

Jesus upsets equilibrium, 

in that when one realizes his presence, everything changes.

It would seem that 

                  if there is to be transformation, healing and growth, 

this kind of disruption is a necessary step in the whole process.

Before peace in a family, comes discord.

 

This is risky 

because there is uncertainty 

about whether others in the family 

will also at that time be willing to move toward change.

 

We all know of situations or relationships in which there is

a delicate balance that often is no more than 

         maintaining a status quo

precisely in order to avoid the dynamic interplay of relationships.

 

That story from Genesis gave us a good example of 

         a very touchy set of relationships 

                  exploding with disastrous results for Hagar and her son,

and for the seemingly eternal rift between Muslim and Jew 

                                             in that part of the world.

Yet that story also presents the potential for reparations.

 

Upsetting the equilibrium can also be seen as opportunity, 

         the place where the Holy Spirit can work.

The same process applies in the life of a congregation.

  

When a faith community gathers on Sunday morning, 

we engage in a deeply personal and intimate activity 

– offering prayer, sharing communion.

 

Personal prayer is offered by each 

within the context of corporate, liturgical prayer.

The personal prayer is so intimate, so close to the heart of our being, 

that for many to express what that is out loud 

in other than set liturgical forms 

is like asking that person to take off their clothes in public.

Our personal prayer prayed from the heart 

is an opening of self in great vulnerability.

 

The Eucharist we share is likewise 

                  tremendously intimate and personal, 

        as well as a corporate act of coming to the dinner table together.

To eat the flesh of the one we call Lord and God 

and to drink his blood 

is such a graphic expression of taking into ourselves, 

of letting into our bodies the Resurrection Jesus, 

that we can hardly talk about it.

 

Yet here we are, Sunday by Sunday, 

eating the flesh and drinking the blood 

and opening our hearts to whatever degree we are able 

to this awful and awesome Mystery of Life, Truth and Way.

 

Since the pandemic and the death and threat of death it brought,

         the equilibrium of the mobile of every congregation 

                   has been upset and knocked out of balance.

Now here is a truism:

         Change is a constant.

But when we have had no say in what changes,

         then we are challenged spiritually.

And at that point is when Jesus says these hard words:

         “Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me

                  is not worthy of me.

         Those who find their life will lose it,

         and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

 

So now here is where we turn to that third reading from Romans,

                  not the easiest of the Epistles to read.

Romans, chapter 6, with its mystical narration

         of losing ourselves in the best way possible:

                  dying in our baptism,

                  downed to our old self-identity

         and emerging from the water with an entirely new identity –

                  as a life eternally bonded in union with Christ.

 

Mystical language,

         but also what we each can experience

                  in all the ways we are daily confronted

                           with what kills life in us

                  and how the Love of God reaches through that

                           to our consciousness

         to let us know we live in Resurrection.

 

The Apostle Paul then exhorts us to 

         “consider yourselves – understand yourselves – 

         to be dead, dead to sin, 

         dead to what in your obstinacy will kill you spiritually

         and alive – now – to God in Christ Jesus.

 

But change keeps happening:

         A rector retires, 

         clergy come and go, 

         the leadership for worship changes, 

         the leadership for administration changes. 

 

New people come, different from us.

         Accepting them challenges us,

                  and yet they bring new gifts as well.

The mobile of the family system 

         finds a new configuration and balance.

 

The equilibrium gets shifted, as it must, 

and within the disturbance of change 

is the presence of the Resurrection Spirit of Jesus 

presenting us with golden opportunities 

for transformation, healing and growth 

personally and as a faith community.

 

You know, mobiles are no fun 

         when they just hang there suspended from the ceiling 

                                             without moving.

They are much more interesting 

when they dance in the breeze, the wind, the Spirit.

The balance is always changing.

 

Look where there is disturbance, 

where the mobile is dancing wildly about.

Isn’t this just what Jesus was talking about.

 

Fear not, 

be open to the Spirit for new aspects of spiritual growth.

Trust, 

and above all love one another for our Lord’s sake.

 

And our Lord always says to all of us,

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? 

Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 

And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 

So do not be afraid; 

you are of more value than many sparrows.”

 

And, you know, God values the sparrows also.