This week, we’re looking at the theme of patience in Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds. Today’s Scripture readings are Romans 8:12-25 and Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43. Here’s my sermon for Sunday, July 19.
Note that in addition to the podcast and video recordings (below), this was our first outdoor worship service of the pandemic (looking back from months later as I post this, I have no idea why we waited so long)!
I especially appreciated Alvina Ostead’s God Pause devotional for July 16, 2020.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
Siblings in Christ, after spending a fair amount of time wrestling with this story Jesus tells about wheat and weeds, I’ve decided something: I don’t like this story.
I know there are always more layers to Jesus’ parables, so I suspect next time I read it I’ll get something else from it, but right now, I’m mostly frustrated with it.
Part of the reality of looking at stories Jesus told nearly 2,000 years ago is that sometimes we need a bunch of historical context for them to make sense, but this one seems pretty easy to follow — I just don’t like where it goes. (Sorry if this is any of your favorite Bible story.)
One technique for listening to a parable, or really any Bible story, is to ask who you relate to in the story. What character in this parable do you identify with?
Maybe you picture yourself as the householder, the one who scatters seeds. Maybe you feel like you’ve been doing the best you can and someone has come along and sabotaged it. That’s a fair interpretation.
Or maybe you identify with the wheat, as one of the children of the kingdom, maybe even surrounded by children of the evil one.
Or I suppose some of us might even have moments of identifying with the one who sabotages the field in the night. It might not be too hard to imagine sneaking into a field at night and doing something you know is a little stupid…sometimes things seem like a good idea at the time, I don’t know.
From how Jesus explains the parable to his disciples once the crowds have left, I think we’re intended to identify with the wheat. And of course, I want to be a good seed, a child of the kingdom, one of the righteous.
This week, though, I mostly see myself as one of the slaves in the story. They’re concerned about what’s happened to the good field they planted. They don’t understand what’s going on, what went wrong; and they want to do something about it. They want to fix the problem, make it better, get back to normal. They want everything to return to the way it should be.
The landowner in the story, the master farmer (I’m pretty sure he represents God), he has a different perspective on the problem. Maybe he’s dealt with this issue before, or maybe he just knows more about growing wheat.
Either way, when this bad thing happens that’s not in his plan, he doesn’t need to jump in right away and do something about it. He doesn’t panic, or react hastily. Instead, he has patience.
The field hands want to make quick judgments and rip out the weeds. The owner agrees there is a problem, things aren’t the way they ought to be, but he’s not ready to act.
Last week, the common thread in our readings was joy. This week, the theme I see is patience. I don’t know about you, but I like joy better than patience. I’m better at joy than I am at patience.
Fortunately, I guess, this season we’re in right now is giving us plenty of opportunities to practice patience.
Here’s one place I’ve struggled with patience this week. I have friends with views all over the political spectrum, and many of them like to share their views online. I usually try to avoid commenting on partisan political issues, but I’m kind of a news junkie, so occasionally when I see someone saying something provably incorrect, I’ll direct them to a factcheck link, on the assumption people don’t want to undercut whatever argument they’re making with something that’s just factually inaccurate. And there is that commandment about not bearing false witness.
The other night, someone I know from my hometown shared a video of a guy sitting in a car yelling conspiracy theories at the camera, and I made the mistake of clicking on it and watching, and then he went more into my realm and starting making it theological. This is my confession to you today: I couldn’t resist. I had to comment with my opinions. Someone was wrong on the internet!
I don’t know if you’ve experienced this too, or if it’s just me, but it’s getting harder and harder to resist pointing out to certain people how wrong they are (and of course, how right I am). The constant low-level frustration of pandemic life combined with an election year is a dangerous combination.
Patience is hard, because it’s so tempting to jump to judgment, to try to fix the problem, to put in my two cents. And of course, God does call us to act. Too often, we Christians have proven ourselves very good at ignoring problems and hoping they’ll go away. There are times we need to speak out and act for justice and work for peace. I’m not saying to be so patient that we ignore the problems in our world.
But sometimes, God’s timing is different than ours. Sometimes we need to wait until the plants grow up and are ready to harvest, so as to not uproot the good wheat with the weeds. In Isaiah, the Lord says, “I am the first and the last.” God is not limited by our concept of time, by the way we think things ought to be done.
And really, that’s good news, because as much as all of us want to identify with the wheat, sometimes we act more like weeds, right? We talk about being both sinner and saint. It’s a good thing the farmer doesn’t give up on us and start uprooting like we might want to do, because we might not like who all is getting uprooted.
And when the time to judge finally comes, you and I are not the ones doing the judging. God’s got that handled – which is a good thing! I’m abundantly confident God is much more loving and merciful than I am.
It was in our Psalm: “You, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”
Whenever the Bible talks about the day of judgment or the end of the age, remember that Jesus the mighty judge is the same one who out of love has entered into the world and sacrificed his life for us.
Our judge is also our redeemer, our advocate, our savior. Our judge is the one who has adopted us as children of God, and “if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.”
I think I’m frustrated right now with this parable, because the message “God will sort it out in the end” might be true, but it isn’t always comforting when you’re in the middle. It’s pretty easy right now to see the whole creation groaning right now. It takes the eyes of faith to see the groaning as labor pains.
Listen again to the last two verses of the first reading from Romans 8. “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?” (Fair enough) “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” May the Holy Spirit make that verse true for us! It’s a good thing God has more patience than we do.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for claiming us and adopting us to be your beloved children. Help us to recognize your presence with us in the times of both joy and pain, in the adventures and in the waiting. Give us faith to trust you as we wait, and to work for your will to be done rather than our own. Thank you for being both our merciful judge and our loving savior, through Jesus Christ.
Amen