[Propertalk] Fwd: [propertalk.topic] Sermon for Proper 11A: “The Wheat and the Weeds” or “Sorry, I Didn’t Recognize You!”

[joeparrish]

Forwarded: 

Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
-------- Original message --------From: Judy <judy_boli at ecunet.org> Date: 7/22/17  6:15 PM  (GMT-05:00) To: Propertalk <propertalk.topic at ecunet.org> Subject: [propertalk.topic] Sermon for Proper 11A: “The Wheat and the Weeds” or “Sorry, I Didn’t Recognize You!” 


Dear Friends,

 

This Sunday’s sermon is entitled “The Wheat and the
Weeds” or “Sorry, I Didn’t Recognize You!” and deals with the Gospel (Matthew
13: 24-30, 36-43).  Here it is: 

 

          Today we have one of the most
valuable of Jesus’ parables, “The Weeds and the Wheat”- so very usable for
sorting out our lives, our relatives, our friends, even our enemies and making
decisions about what to do about them. 
In fact, it’s one of the two parables of Jesus that has given the most
guidance for us in our feeding ministries through the years.  The parable of Jesus separating the sheep and
the goats in Matthew 25 (“Whatever you do for the least of these my sisters or
brothers, you do for me.”) informs us WHY we bother to help those experiencing
hard times in their lives.  This one
answers the question that so very often surfaces: what should we do about
people when we think they are just trying to rip us off?  I’m talking about the kind of situation in
which we’re not sure- there’s no clear-cut case.  Sometimes it’s like we’re between a rock and
a hard place.  Christian people have
entrusted us with their money to use for feeding the needy.  This means we are managing God’s money, so we
really want to take care of it for him and use it as he would want us to use
it.  Then here comes someone asking for
food.  Maybe we’re running low.  Whatever- if we give it to this person,
perhaps a more needy family will come along, and then we won’t have anything
for them.  Do you see the problem?  This is when we remember this Jesus parable
and follow the rule: “If in doubt- feed.” 
This parable offers three levels of insight- not only for
decision-making for our feeding ministry; it also offers insight for
decision-making for our lives. 

          The first level of insight involves
how we relate to other people.  Most of
the people listening to Jesus tell his story were farmers or at least
gardeners, so they were extremely familiar with plant care.  As you recall, often Jesus would make up a
story that was very similar to something that had really happened in the lives
of his listeners, so perhaps they knew someone with a wheat field who had an
enemy vandalize his farm by reseeding his wheat field with poisonous darnell
seeds.  Did you notice how the farmer
told his farmhands not to pull up the weed seeds because they would uproot too
many young wheat plants in the process? 
He said this for two reasons. 
First, it’s next to impossible to tell the difference between wheat and
darnell when the plants are young. 
Second, the roots are so intertwined; damage would be done to the whole
root structure of both plants.  Good
advice, not only if you have a garden with wheat and darnell growing
together.  Good advice also if you are
trying to decide if you should tell someone off and kick them out of our
feeding ministry, our church, your family, or your life.  I’ve got a story for you.  There is a story about a guy who falls in
love with a beautiful woman and begs her to go out with him. “Be serious,” the
woman says. “You’re fat, bald, ugly and your wardrobe is atrocious!”  So the guy goes on a diet and loses 80 pounds
and starts working out at a gym. He gets a hair transplant and plastic surgery.
He even buys himself a new wardrobe. Finally, he goes back to the woman and
asks her what she thinks. “What a hunk!" she says, and she agrees to a
date.  So he arrives at her door with a
limo and driver. She emerges from her house radiant, promising him a
never–to–be–forgotten evening. As they walk together toward the limo, lightning
strikes the man. So now he’s lying on the street dying, and he cries out, “Why
now, God? Why now, on the happiest day of my life?”  God answers. “Sorry, Sam. I didn’t recognize
you” (anonymous).  Now friends, if God
Almighty didn’t recognize him, what makes us think we can know enough about a
person to judge them!  Did you notice the
Psalm, how God reminds us that he knows everything about us, he knows our
hearts, and there is nowhere we can hide from him?  God knows the hearts of every single person,
but the problem (or blessing) is- we don’t. 
We don’t know what is in someone’s heart.  We don’t know why they choose to do what they
do.  That’s why Jesus says to wait and
leave the judging to God.  Not only don’t
we know all the facts, something else is involved.  Plants don’t change from poisonous weeds to
useful wheat, but people do.  We are a
jubilee church, a second chance church. 
God gives each of us many chances, and so must we.

                Let’s look at
the second level of insight- how we relate to ourselves.  An anonymous author said, “There is so much
good in the worst of us; and so much bad in the best of us that it ill behooves
any of us to find fault with the rest of us.” 
Remember last Sunday how we heard St. Paul lament about how hard it was
to live for Christ.  How he kept doing
the things he didn’t want to do and not doing the things he wanted to do?  (Romans 7: 18-19)  Our job is to love other people and stop
worrying about their sins.  Jesus himself
reminded us to stop worrying about the tiny splinter that is in our neighbor’s
eye when we have a huge log in our own eye! 
It’s the weeds in our own lives we’re supposed to worry about.

          This brings us to the third level of
insight we can derive from this parable- the weeds.  Did you notice that God could use even the
weeds?  Fuel was scarce in Jesus’
time.  Darnell plants made great fuel for
cooking and warming cold hands and feet in miserable weather.  Who made weeds anyway?  (God.) 
What is a weed?  (A plant made by
God growing where we don’t want it.)  Has
anyone noticed the cement area that used to be part of a deserted parking
lot?  It doesn’t take long before the
weeds have almost broken up the cement. 
Give them and the earthworms a little more time and that hard cement
will be returned to soft, fertile soil. 
There’s nothing like a mess of weeds, mistakes, regrets in our lives to
soften our hearts and help us understand other people and their difficulties
better.  It’s the weeds, the mistakes,
the “OOPS” that force us to replan our lives and lean on God and our Christian
friends for power, support, and regrowth.

                So weeds and wheat- be patient with
them, don’t be too quick with judgments, check your own life, and watch for how
amazingly God turns weeds given over to him into wonderfully beautiful flowers.

For anyone who is
interested, this sermon and updated African-American wisdom statements are
posted on our parish’s web site under “Sermons & Stuff”. The address is: http://www.stpaulsepisag.org .

 

Blessed preaching,

Judy Boli

St. Paul's Episcopal Church

Saginaw, Michigan





-- 

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Propertalk" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to propertalk.topic+unsubscribe at ecunet.org.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://stsams.org/pipermail/propertalk_stsams.org/attachments/20170722/e3977611/attachment.htm>