SCRIPTURE READINGS:
[GENESIS 45:1-15]
[PSALM 133]
[ROMANS 11:1-2A, 29-32]
[MATTHEW 15:10-28]
Today’s Gospel has a lot to say to us. In a simple story it speaks to us of what I believe to be the one of the core principles of Jesus’ manifesto not only for the Jews of Israel but for everyone from then until now and beyond. In such an unpretentious scene Jesus illustrates the deep change he wanted to make in society and in our hearts. Changing how we perceive each other, especially back 2000 years ago, was very important to Jesus -
He was an “agent provocateur” long before Jesus appeared on the Sanhedrin’s radar. He had been quietly but visibly reinterpreting the foundational rules of Jewish society. Jews at the time, lived lives guided by many rules of ritual cleanliness. Who or what was ritually pure involved everything in life, not just food and inanimate objects but men and women of their own community. Then here comes this itinerant teacher, this man who wants to turn all of their guidelines on their ear. He is a rabbi, someone to be listened to for interpretation of those rules and he tells that that it isn’t about what goes into the mouth of a person that defiles them, it is what comes out of their mouth! In other words, their words and how they speak to each other and to strangers is more important that meat and cheese being served on the same plate. Or that is someone is ritually impure because of what they do for a living or are from a family of only certain means – Jesus quietly shows they are still people of value. People that deserve to pray and be listened to by God! People who merited to belong to the community and deserve to be loved.
When Jesus speaks about “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and this is what defiles it – for out of the heart comes evil intentions.” I thought of Charlottesville.
You see, I used to live in Charlottesville and as the commentators started talking about the tearing down of General Lee – I knew exactly where that was because my toddler daughter Hannah and I used to walk by that statue after our weekly library visits while I enjoyed my independent coffee shop coffee (pre-Starbucks)!. When White Supremacists gathered for a rally recently– I was shocked that they had a permit and permission to parade on the University campus. I was angry when I heard of these people gathering in Charlottesville – but I was not surprised. For all its beauty and architecture, Charlottesville has a history of being a segregated town in Virginia. I know, I have seen it myself. I can remember going into a major chain restaurant (thank goodness, it is now defunct) and being seated in the best seats in the house, up the front by the big windows. From there the view is very clear. All the white patrons sit up the front in the nice seats and all the black patrons are seated in the back beside the kitchen.
It was so obvious that we kept our eyes on it at subsequent visits, to make sure it was an ongoing issue. It was. And one day, as my friend Lizzie, a barrister from England and I were being seated up front, I tapped the arm of the hostess and said, “no, we’d like to sit in the back near the kitchen”. She was incredulous and after confirming with me, she indeed sat us there. The air conditioning didn’t really overcome the heat coming out of the kitchen, so it was much hotter than the seats up front. The servers don’t come around as often; I guess not expecting the tip to be very high. Our food came same as usual but what was different were the looks we got from people. The black patrons sitting with us, smiled huge smiles and understood exactly what we were saying in our quiet way. I don’t know if the white patrons noticed anything, because for them, nothing had changed. However, for us, everything had changed – our perspective had changed. It was the last time we went to that chain for about 25 years. When we revisited Charlottesville, the restaurant had changed hands and there were many black patrons in at the time we dined in the restaurant’s new incarnation.
I was disgusted to follow the tragedy and death of Heather Hyer. Say her name aloud. Say Heather Hyer’s name in the company of those young civil rights workers from the Freedom Summer of 1964. James Earl Chaney from Meridia Mississippi and Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner from New York City were murdered while trying to register African Americans in Mississippi to vote. Heather and all the other martyrs who have fought racism must be remembered. I don’t even know the name of her murderer. But I do know that Heather believed that “if you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention”. Her mother Susan Bro urged the large crowd at Heather’s memorial service, to “find in your heart that small spark of accountability and you will find the courage to speak up.” She went on to say “We don’t all have to die to achieve our goals, we can do it together”. This is what Jesus was teaching, about community. He urged his disciples to look beyond the ideas of ritual cleanliness and the Mosaic Law which spoke of something as “unclean” if it was unfit to use in worship to God. Being “clean” or “unclean” was a designation governing the ritual of corporate or community worship. For example, there were certain animals, like pigs, considered unclean, and therefore not to be used in sacrifices and there were certain actions, like touching a dead body, that made a living person unclean and unable to participate in the worship ceremony. A skin infection could make a person “unclean” and a woman was unclean following childbirth. Jesus followed up on Mosaic Law calling His people to separate themselves from the impurities of the world with the idea of living spiritually pure and seeking to be holy, living a life worthy of our calling. He associated with people far outside his station – people who would be considered forever ritually unclean, like lepers, tax collectors and adulteresses.
You don’t have to think of murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness or slander to have “evil intentions” as they are named here. I’m quite sure the organizers of the rally in Charlottesville weren’t thinking of murdering Heather, but they were thinking of evil intentions such as inflicting fear and intimidation on innocent people. The considered and planned ideas to drive down other people, rather than to lift them up. These are the evil intentions in the heart that Jesus is talking about.
He is also talking to us in our lives today. How do we defile the community? Are there times when what comes from our hearts, is not clean. It is of the intention to drive someone down, when I could be raising someone or some purpose or idea up!
We are blessed when we identify with another person’s woundedness and we raise them up to God. How many times do we wonder how do we lift this person up to God? We pray for them, but what else can we do – we can listen. Just being a person who cares enough to listen to another’s woundedness, is where Jesus enters in. He enters in, when we just recognize that another person is in need, another person needs to be heard and acknowledged. Jesus has a new commandment and it is easy to interpret, unlike the ritual cleansing rules – Jesus just wants us to show love and compassion to everyone we meet. In John 15:12 He lays it out “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” Heather did, and so did James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Henry Schwerner, Medgar Evers, Fred Hampton, Harry and Harriette Moore, and Dr. Martin Luther King.
Jesus said “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another”. As Anglicans we have made our Baptismal Covenant saying “we strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being”. This is the way we chose to interpret Jesus’ command. The challenge of course, is to live out our baptismal promises every day. It is a way of life to give oneself to. Our lives these days are so hurried. Too fast, always on the go until, if you are like our family, eventually you flop down in front of the TV and either vegetate or fall asleep. We need, I believe, to salvage a few minutes every day for introspection. How AM I doing? Was I the person I strive to be today or was I so hurried, I lived without intention today. Did I take the smallest opportunity to lift anyone up? Did I take a moment with Jesus to talk about who I am and who I want to be? See if you can scratch together 5-6 minutes each day, for a little evaluation, summation, inspiration and resurrection.
God bless you on your journey to bring justice and peace to all people and dignity to every human being.
(Sermon preached by Bishop Terry Brown at Church of the Ascension, Hamilton, Ontario on the Tenth Sunday of Pentecost, August 13, 2017. Text: Matthew 14: 22-33.)
How many here remember learning to ride a bicycle as a child? Do you remember the trainer wheels? Did you have them or not? I recall that my parents would not allow me to have them. I had to learn to ride without them. I was told that I really would not learn to ride if I grew to depend on them. So I learned without them, and sometimes falling down.
Rethinking this Gospel story, Jesus’ invitation to Peter to join him in walking on the water, reminds me of learning to ride a bicycle. Just as Peter starts to do it right – just as his faith is strong enough to do it, and he tries to walk on the water, he notices the strong waves, becomes frightened and begins to sink into the sea. So the young bicyclist, just beginning to ride on his or her own, suddenly looks down and realizes what is happening and begins to take a tumble. But the parent, perhaps running along side, reaches out and steadies the bicycle, just as Jesus reaches out and strengthens Peter’s faith and saves him. Peter steps out without a rock or reef to step back on to (no “trainer wheels”) but onto the deep itself. And just as the young bicyclist usually does learn to ride the bicycle with practice, Peter, at least metaphorically, learns to “walk on water” in a ministry in often very difficult situations.
To extend the metaphor, we may be Peter, willing to step out in faith, or we may be back in the boat, frightened of what is going on around us, perhaps just being sensible and trying to keep safe. That is not a bad thing. Yet there are also times to try to “walk on water”, so to speak.
I have long been fascinated by the proverb “fools rush in where angels fear to tread”. It is one of those proverbs like “charity begins at home” that we may ascribe to the Bible but really isn’t there. It was first used by the English poet, Alexander Pope, in 1711 in his “Essay on Criticism” and has become a part of Anglo-American culture. The phrase is used to urge caution in dealing with complicated and difficult situations. I have said it many times to myself when faced with very difficult pastoral situations. To continue our Coronation Street theme of last week, many a Coronation Street plot revolves around a fool who rushes in where an angel would have feared to tread. Indeed, Peter’s friends in the boat may have regarded him as a fool for trying to join Jesus on the water. Even if the water is very rough, the boat is still safer.
As Christians, we are called to risk, to try to walk on water, so to speak, and perhaps we need to be careful about invoking the expression “fools rush in where angels fear to tread” too much. Indeed, in the 1947 film “The Bishop’s Wife”, the angel Dudley (Cary Grant) turns the expression around, “angels rush in where fools fear to tread”. But even Peter’s “rushing in” to walk with Jesus on the water did not come out of the blue. His decision was based on a developing trusting relationship with Jesus that would continue to develop after this traumatic but liberating experience.
Perhaps the proverb “fools rush in where angels fear to tread” is best understood as having two stages. At first, we heed the proverb and do not rush in. But as we study the situation and begin to understand it, as our faith grows, as we practise riding the bicycle, so to speak, we make a move and become involved. We do not permanently huddle frightened in the boat.
The Diocese of Niagara has a special grants program, WOW, “Walk on Water”, for new parish initiatives that seem impossible, like walking on water, but may be quite possible with strong faith and hard work. So far we have not applied for one of these grants; perhaps we are just a bit too huddled in our boat, worrying about the parish’s finances or numbers. But it is a good challenge to us: what would it be for us as a parish to “walk on water” – to venture into the community in a new and imaginative way? As one who lives in the neighborhood, I must say it is a difficult challenge, surrounded as we are by inaccessible high-rise apartment buildings and people of very different cultural backgrounds to whom we look very strange. But the possibility of a WOW grant is a good challenge to us: we would not be able to complain that we cannot afford it. With the news that Arabic has replaced Italian as Hamilton’s second language used in homes, perhaps we should offer Arabic lessons! That is just one idea. With the tragedy that has been unfolding in Virginia, perhaps we can envision a WOW grant that will help prevent the same thing from happening here.
We do not just witness as a parish but also as individual Christians. And in our day-to-day lives these are many opportunities to move beyond the discouraging “fools rush in where angels fear to tread” to trying to “walk on water” and trust our faith in new friendships and relationships, perhaps across religious, cultural or age barriers. That may just mean a friendly smile or word in the elevator, rather than a scowl. Building neighbourliness on a single floor of an apartment building is a challenge but it is worth the try. On a more personal level, perhaps it is time to share more of one’s personal life and needs with a friend, rather than keeping everything secret and secure. In the end, walking on water in faith is more liberating than being huddled in the boat afraid.
As Matthew’s parables in the last few weeks have illustrated, the result of this walking-on-water faith is abundance and quality: abundance of life, even abundance of numbers. (Like many of you, I was struck by the number and variety of mourners at Neil’s funeral on Friday; they were a witness to abundance coming out of Christian love and concern expressed in a community many of us would be uncomfortable with.) So, the invitation is, step out, walk on water a bit, do not be afraid, risk, for even if we fail, Jesus’ hand is there, ready to lift us up. God, give us the strength and courage to step out and risk. Thanks be to God!
(Homily preached at the funeral of Neil Richard Turner (1951-2017) by Bishop Terry Brown at Church of the Ascension, Hamilton, Ontario on Friday, August 11, 2017. Texts: Isaiah 61: 1-3, Psalm 23, 2 Corinthians 4: 5-15, John 10: 11-16.)
The themes of this afternoon’s three lessons – justice, vulnerability and care for others – are crucial to the Christian life. Neil, whom we remember today, as we have already heard in Ken’s eulogy, exemplified all of them. The themes flow together, in our lives, as they did in Neil’s.
The promise of Messianic rule in Isaiah is freedom from oppression, healing of the broken hearted, release of the captives, and comfort to those who mourn. Our city especially seems to have many who have hit the bottom, who struggle, who desperately need encouragement, support, prosperity, stability, good housing, and close friends. Day-by-day they come to this church and all our churches and social service institutions for support. Governments and non-government organizations too struggle with poverty and homelessness. Our hospital emergency rooms and jails are places of sad alienation and suffering.
Yet those who struggle in this city are not an object, not an “other”; they are ourselves. That Neil realized as he struggled with those very realities in his own life and reached out to others often in greater difficulty than himself. Thus, he always reached out with a dream of real human justice – a place to sleep, a meal to eat, security in old age, a friendly conversation (albeit often laced with a certain amount of gossip) – and was frustrated with big reports, statistics, committees, bureaucracies and grand promises. Thus, this parish sometimes frustrated him too.
If there is a lesson there, it is that justice must be concrete and not abstract: a reality, not just an ideal. And despite our sociological or psychological theories, real justice, with real people, must be accomplished. And that in seeking justice for others, we are apt to encounter our own vulnerabilities.
Paul’s image of the reign of God as a treasure in vulnerable clay pots is a powerful one. It was the first scriptural image that came to mind as I thought about this homily. When we are young, we may think of our bodies as ever healthy and invincible. But as we age, we realize just how vulnerable we are, to sickness, to depression, to pain, to the deprecations of loneliness, poverty or insecurity. Yet, through the cracks and imperfections of these clay pots, the glory of God shines. One is tempted to reverse Leonard Cohen’s song to, “There are cracks in everything, and that’s how the light gets out”.
With early abuse by one he trusted, with a not very good educational background, with a sexual orientation not very well accepted at the time, with illness and too great a fondness for the pub, Neil was a vulnerable person and he did realize it. We talked about it many times. Yet despite the fragile clay pot of his body, he dreamed, he hoped, he reached out, he loved, he listened, he planned, he ministered. Despite not fulfilling some of his dreams, I experienced his constant encouragement. And many of you here who have known Neil for decades remember, I am sure, a person who reached out in care and compassion despite, and often because of, his many vulnerabilities.
We are reminded that we are all vulnerable but that within those vulnerabilities there are still many opportunities for loving service and seeking of justice. We have the choice of turning in on ourselves and retreating to despair and depression; or we can keep dreaming, keep studying, keep talking, keep connecting. The latter is the Christian way and it was Neil’s as well.
The image of Christ as the Good Shepherd in John 10, which we read as our Gospel, is often read at ordinations and associated with the work of bishops and priests. This over-clericalization of the passage belies the point that first it is God who has the character of Loving Shepherd over all creation, including humanity; that Jesus Christ, humanity taken into God and made divine, is the perfect human manifestation of that divine Good Shepherd, and that in our baptismal ministries we all become Good Shepherds, looking after the best interests of one another. None of us are called to be passive sheep. Nor are church leaders called to lord it over others, let alone the powerless.
Neil certainly had a vocation of shepherd-like caring for others. Whether in his apartment building or on a bench in front of the public library, or in Jackson Square or James Street coffee shops, whether in local pubs (one of them he took me to, I must admit, frightened even me), whether at the cathedral or this parish, whether at the Poverty Roundtable, Mission Services or the Salvation Army, Neil was always available to listen and encourage. He loved people. E.M. Forester’s “Only Connect” might well have been his motto. It is a good motto for ourselves also. “Only Connect”.
Neil dearly hoped to be a priest. It did not happen. Perhaps if he had been born a bit later, or not been so outspoken about his private life, he might have had a better chance. The church did give him opportunities. But prophecy and self-sabotage are not necessarily incompatible and Neil was a strange mixture of both. I tried hard, but I never managed to organize him. There was always another course to be taken. The dreamer dreamt on.
But now Neil will rest and rise where clergy or lay status makes no difference; where wealth or poverty makes no difference; where education or lack of education makes no difference; where gay, bi, tri, straight or trans makes no difference, where whether dreams are accomplished or not makes no difference – as part of the faithful company of heaven gathered around God’s throne, resurrected in God’s glory. We thank God for Neil’s life and witness, we thank God that he is now free of pain and suffering, and we commend him to God, the angels and the saints. Thanks be to God!
(Sermon preached by Bishop Terry Brown on the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 2017, at Church of the Ascension, Hamilton, Ontario. Texts: Daniel 7: 9-10, 13-14; 2 Peter 1: 16-19; and Luke 9: 28-36.)
In our three lessons this morning for the Feast of the Transfiguration, we see a common pattern: first, an Old Testament prophecy, in this case an apocalyptic vision from the book of Daniel; then an historical account written in the present tense, in this case, Luke’s account of the event in his Gospel; and finally a later writing, looking back to the event as of great importance, in this case Peter’s second Epistle, which sees the event as of great significance in salvation history.
What is common in these three accounts – future, present, past – is that the Transfiguration is a moment of divine revelation when Jesus’ identity as Son of God and Messiah becomes clear. The Old Testament prophecy of One like a human being presented before the throne of the Ancient One is fulfilled in the Transfigured Jesus on the holy mountain. The confused and disbelieving disciples (including Peter) who accompany Jesus to the holy mountain hear and see Jesus identified by a voice from God, “This is my Son, my chosen, listen to Him!” and believe. And decades later, in his epistle, Peter thinks back to the experience to affirm the truth of Jesus’ identity as God’s Son and the Messiah: that Christ is more than a clever story or idea but divine reality. “We ourselves heard this voice from heaven, when we were with him on the holy mountain”. Therefore, Peter continues, writing to the beleaguered Christians of Asia Minor, “you will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
Thus, we do well to see the Transfiguration as a kind of conversion experience, a turning around, metanoia, both in the lives of the three disciples who accompanied Jesus to the holy mountain, but also in the lives of the recipients of Peter’s letter, hence his warning to them, “you do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts”.
From what and to what is the conversion? The conversion is from confusion about who Jesus is, perhaps seeing him as only a healer or miracle-worker or prophet or the result of a self-serving myth or fable, to, through a flash of divine light (and the Transfiguration account is full of brightness and light), the understanding that God is here and his Son has been revealed to us; and we are changed as a result. Jesus is transfigured so that we, like Peter, John and James, and the church after them, might believe and act faithfully on that reality.
As Anglicans, we are sometimes rather suspicious of conversion experiences, especially when they seem to be repeated without much effect in, for example, altar calls. Yet even if we are born into the faith and baptized as infants, we are encouraged to pray and reflect such that there are points along the way when we declare, “I do believe this” or at least have a kind of “ah-ha” moment when we identify ourselves with the life and teaching, the death and resurrection, of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, the Messiah. For some the moments may be more intellectual, for others, more emotional. Often, as with the Transfiguration account, light is involved: coming out of darkness and confusion, into the light.
Ours is also an age that likes to de-construct, to take things apart. I am sure we have all had the experience of taking something apart and not being able to put it back together again. (Just ask me about keyboards of computers past.) Indeed, the disciples immediately deconstruct the vision, the appearance of Moses and Elijah, and re-construct it wrongly, “let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah”. But the divine cloud overshadows them and the voice from heaven overrules their human response with the divine word: “This is my Son, my chosen, listen to him!”
In the end, in any Christian conversion experience, it is the divine that overrules the human, that catches us up short, that turns us around, that makes us think again, that re-directs and re-energizes us. We are called to be open to this conversion and re-conversion all the time, particularly as we get caught up in the controversies and problems of our time or our personal lives. I say to myself, perhaps the Transfiguration is calling me away a bit from my new addiction to CNN and following the saga of US politics in the age of Trump. (I’ll exempt Coronation Street because it is fiction but even it can become addictive.) Sometimes evil transfigurations are more interesting to follow than divine ones. But there is always the danger that evil transfigurations can draw us into themselves and make us take on some of their character.
Jesus’ Transfiguration and the faith it engenders calls us to love and compassion, to brightness and truth, to good humour and wise judgement, to mutual support and encouragement. It calls us to redeem both old and new for the sake of God’s reign: whether old scriptures and tradition or new technology such as the social media and new scientific discoveries. (We remember the ending of last week’s Gospel, the householder bringing out treasures new and old.) Transfiguration and conversion stick with us and last a lifetime. Transfiguration is an attitude that keeps us open to constant conversion from confusion and misunderstanding to truth and light.
More than once, especially in international contexts, I have been reminded that the date of Transfiguration, August 6th, is also the day the first atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima, Japan in 1945. For Japanese Christians, it is almost impossible to preach about the Transfiguration without contrasting it to the horrible destruction of nuclear weapons, still experienced by families. We are reminded that the conversion represented by the Transfiguration is not just individual and personal, but a call for nations to turn away from war, and especially weapons of war, such as poisonous gas, landmines, saturation bombing and nuclear weapons, that are indiscriminate in their destruction. We have numerous social situations in Canada, from homelessness and poverty, to the situation of many of our First Nations peoples, that demand conversion and transfiguration on a societal and political scale.
Was the Transfiguration also a kind of conversion experience for Jesus? Luke’s account does not give us even a hint of what Jesus experienced; he is only deep in prayer. In Luke’s account of Jesus' ministry, Jesus already understood himself and his vocation. Yet, the Transfiguration must have been an enormous moment of affirmation and giving of strength, as he prepared to descend to Jerusalem where he will be arrested and crucified. Indeed, it is a prefiguring of his Resurrection, that out of the death to come, there will be new life and redemption.
But we are with Peter, James and John, needing and seeking clarity; and through the divine light and word, moving to and continuing in the new way of Christ, Son of God, the Messiah. As we are resurrected, we pray that we may be transfigured along the way also.
For a month this summer we have been having short Bible studies on the homily after the service and I invite us to continue that this morning. I think my question for us is whether this interpretation of Transfiguration as personal conversion makes sense and can we look back to past moments of realization and conversion in our lives that have enabled, in Peter’s words, the “morning star [to] rise in [our] hearts”. And where are we in need of more conversion, more exposure to the light and glory of the Transfiguration, to let God’s grace flow through us.
Even if we may be old and nearing sunset, so to speak, and this morning we mourn the death of our dear friend and parishioner, Neil, the dawn metaphor is a powerful one and does not go away as we get older or even die. The Transfiguration of Christ, like the Resurrection of Christ that it prefigures, is “a lamp shining in a dark place” enabling that “morning star” to rise in our hearts, if only we have faith and do not despair. So let us too, with Peter, James, John and Jesus, go down to Jerusalem, to the hurly-burly and roughness of our times, to poverty, to confusion, to hatred, to suffering, to loneliness, to greed in a society that pursues wealth as a god, and let us be that light and that glory, that dawn, that morning star, that Transfigured and Resurrected Christ in our broken and violent world. Amen.
This week, we begin a new project here at Church of the Ascension. For the next 4 weeks we will be holding a discussion group following our service. It will be held in the Frances Hawkins chapel and the purpose is to discuss the sermon; ask your questions or make your comments. We are hoping it may encourage you to listen in a different way, knowing there is a venue for you - right after the service, to engage with others in this path of discovery.
I’m not a gardener, Lord knows I have tried. I’ve bought every tool – every book and watched loads of PBS and YouTube videos, I’ve managed to keep an herb garden alive for a few years, and a few little patio tomato plants but alas I was not gifted with a green thumb, as my husband Bill will attest to.
But I do have a warm hand that reaches out to hold people in need of comfort, friendship, and prayer. This Gospel today though, is a parable all about gardening, oh but it is.
Jesus tells a story that compared his church to a garden that was infested with weeds. Wow! Infested – that is a pretty strong world, so I am figuring that he meant an overwhelming number of people in his church showed some weediness. Sometimes there may be people in the church that don’t really belong. They do and say things that aren’t very loving and they don’t seem to believe in what the Bible teaches. They sometimes say even go so far as to say hateful things about other members of the church and try to hurt them. They are like the weeds in the garden.
They don’t often know what goes on in other people’s lives. They do not know the burdens other people carry around with them. Yet we all think we know enough to make instant judgements of others and take swift action, usually with our mouths.
The Indian poet Tagore told of the day his servant arrived at work late. Like so many of his upper class, Tagore was helpless when it came to menial things, or he made himself helpless because as a member of the upper caste he considered himself above these things.
An hour went by and the servant hadn’t arrived. Tagore was getting angrier by the minute. He thought of all the punishments he was going to inflict upon his servant when he finally arrived. Three hours passed. Now he no longer thought of punishments, he knew that he would fire him when he got there.
Finally, noon arrived. The servant came to work and without a world, proceeded to do his work. He picked up his master’s clothes, began to make a meal and do other chores around the house. Tagore watched all of this in silent rage. Finally, he said, “Drop everything and get out of here. You’re fired.” The man kept working, quietly, diligently. Tagore said, “Get out of here.” The man said, “My little girl died this morning.”
The farmhands/servants in today’s parable are anxious to run out into the field, pull up all the weeds they see mixing in with the crop of wheat, because they are certain that the weeds will end of choking off the good wheat. However, when the Landowner returns and tells them to leave the weeds where they are, they are puzzled by his apparent lack of concern for the mess his crop had got into.
Upon hearing this story, the disciples are puzzled too: Why shouldn’t they get rid of the weeds. They ask Jesus about it.
Jesus explains that the farmhands/servants are told not to pull the weeds up because sometimes it is impossible to tell the weeds from the wheat. And when they pull up the bad weeds they will uproot some good wheat.
They are told not to because making the judgment about which is a weed and which is wheat is not the job of the farmhands. That judgement is best left up to the owner. That is why the owner in the parable cautions “Don’t act too quickly. Don’t jump to conclusions.” We know God is the landowner and only God can make the judgement on people … who is wheat and who is weed.
When the servant in the parable ask, “Master did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from? We’d like to know the answer to that one too. We would like to know why there is evil in the world. The parable doesn’t explain to us: why evil exists; why good things get corrupted; why some kids get messed up; why bad things happen to good people. Why it seems the innocent suffer most. Parables rarely answer our questions directly. Their meaning is much more illusive. That is why each time we read them, we tend to see and hear something new.
And as the parable implies, we often fall into the trap of seeing individuals as wheat or weeds: either all good or all bad; rather than having the capacity for both good and bad. Using the language of the parable, people are not either/or; they have the capacity for hope, love and joy which is born of God, and the capacity for destruction and bitterness which is born of the evil in the world. When we try to separate the world into good guys and bad guys, inevitably the seedlings of hope, love, joy which were growing quietly in the lives of those we condemn are crushed underfoot.
Matthew’s parable this week is in one sense a warning. Lest we think we have it all figured out how to judge evil from good, moral from immoral, right from wrong, virtuous from unvirtuous, think again! According to whose authority do we think we can make the judgement? When? In what contexts? By what standards? Oh it is easy to call Hitler evil or even Charles Manson, how about other despots. So far it’s been easy, but what about certain political leaders or political movements? Where do we draw the line at what is evil versus what is mentally ill or just opportunist?
When we start going down the road of making our lot in life deciding what is good and evil, we may very well discover that others will make similar conclusions about us.
Good and evil coexist. Though it’s almost always easier for us to recognize the evil in others than it is to see it in ourselves.
Some time ago the U.S. News & World Report ran article about how Americans often are not civil to each other. The article reported that in a survey, 90% of all Americans said that the loss of civility was a serious problem in their country. But that same survey found that 99% of all Americans say that they themselves are civil. In the survey only about 1 person in 100 was willing to admit that they were part of the problem.
When we are honest with ourselves, we can identify with the words of the Apostle Paull. Referring to his own struggles, he says: I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do”. (Romans 7:19)
Those of us who grew up Catholic, were never allowed to forget that we are sinners – and by the way, don’t forget to feel guilty about it – Martin Luther used the Latin phrase “Simul Justus et paccator’, we are saints and sinners at the same time.
As the old saying goes:
‘There is so much bad in the best of us,
And there is so much good in the worst of us,
That it hardly behooves any of us,
To speak any ill of the rest of us!”
Nevertheless, we are often quick to judge others who we consider the weeds in this world.
The owner in this parable calls for caution and patience. He tells us not to go into the field ripping out what we thing are weeds least we inadvertently uproot the good wheat that the same time. Be slow to judge for you just never know.
The wonderful writer and preacher Barbara Brown Taylor has written a re-creation of this parable and we can learn more about the benefits of living with weeds. She writes: “One afternoon in the middle of the growing season, a bunch of farmhands decided to surprise their boss and weed his favourite wheat field. No sooner had they begun work, however than they began to argue – first about which of the wheat-looking things were weeds and then about the rest of the weeds. Did the Queen Anne’s lace pose a real threat to the wheat or could it stay for decoration? And the blackberries? They would be ripe in just a week or two, but they were after weeds – or were they? And the honeysuckle – it seemed a shame to pull up anything that smelled so sweet.”
Taylor continues: “About the time they had gotten around to debating the purple asters, the boss showed and ordered them out of his field. Dejected, they did as they were told. Back at the barn the boss took away their machetes from them, poured them some lemonade and made them go down where they could watch the way the light moved across the field. At first, all they could see were the weeds and what a messy field it was, what a discredit to them, and their profession, but as the summer wore on they marveled at the profusion of growth – tall wheat surrounded by tall goldenrod, ragweed and brown-eyed Susans. The tares and the poison ivy flourished alongside the Cherokee roses and milkweed and it was a mess, but a glorious mess, and when it had all bloomed and ripened and gone to seed the reapers came.
And Taylor concludes: “Carefully, gently, expertly, the reapers gathered the wheat and made the rest into bricks for the oven where the bread was baked. And the fire that the weeds made was excellent and the flour that the wheat made was excellent and when the harvest was over the owner called them together – the farmhands, the reapers and all the neighbours – and he broke bread with them, bread that was the final distillation of that whole messy, gorgeous, missed-up field, and they all agreed that it was like no bread any of them had ever tasted before and that is was very very good.”
The Good News is that God is able to make something great come out of this whole, glorious mess of intermingled wheat and weeds. God somehow miraculously takes this mess of ours and brings forth from it both excellent flour and excellent fire to produce life-giving bread.
Sure we get frustrated and discouraged with the weeds in our lives but that than becoming dispirited or impatient with the weeds, the parable reminds us of God’s promise that the good seed has been planted in all of us. It is growing and is being nurtured. In each grain God sees the beginning of the realm where peace, respect and love can flourish. Lest we get anxious and desperately start trying to pull out the weeds, we are reminded that God is in the midst of working with us. Weeds and all. Now stay around for the best bread ever.
Amen.
