The Job We Didn’t Get

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost - July 23, 2017

Lou Kolb, Certified Lay Minister

Wheat! and Weeds! Even if you'd never heard of the parable we just read in this morning's gospel, you would, no doubt, know how to classify these two items; Wheat is good! Weeds, not so much. Wheat is food! It makes up our bread and pasta. We eat rather a lot of it. Weeds are mainly a pain in the neck to any of you who are gardeners, and I expect that's more than a few of you.

And that is one of the main points of the parable. In fact, Jesus explains as much to his disciples. He says the one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man! That, of course, is Christ himself! The field is the world. The good seed are the children of the kingdom. The bad seed or the weeds are the children of the evil one, the devil! Jesus doesn't say who the workers are but I think we can safely surmise that they are his disciples and by extension, you and me! When the presence of the weeds is discovered, the workers, loyal workers that they are, immediately ask the land-owner if they should pull them out. The land-owner says no, for in so doing, you may uproot the wheat.

Now let's pause here to talk about the visual difference between wheat and weeds. There is, in Israel, a common weed called Darnel. Apparently, it looks much like wheat when the plants are young. Only when the two plants mature can you see the difference. Because the wheat plant has a full ear of grain, it droops, when it ripens, with its bounty. The Darnel, on the other hand, stands up straight, so the two are easily distinguished. Also, the roots of the weed become intertwined with those of the wheat. No wonder the land owner did not want the workers to pull out the weeds. They would likely have done more harm than good.

What about us? Can we tell the difference between the wheat and the weeds? We sure think we can. And yet, our opinions sure seem to conflict with one another. I'm 64, and these are the most polarized times I can remember, perhaps even more so than in the celebrated 60s. Back then, the dividing lines were mainly age-related. But I don't think that's as true today. We tend to be rather taken with our own judgement. Just look at Facebook! 90 percent of it is judgement. But it runs the whole spectrum from one end to the other. Surely, not all of us are right, are we? Maybe that's why we were not given the job of separating the wheat from the weeds. And we didn't get that job.

Jesus tells the disciples quite clearly that the Angels will take care of that at the appointed time. Back in the 1600s, there was a widely and firmly held belief that the Earth was the center of the Galaxy and everything, including the Sun, revolved around it. Galileo, following up on the work of Copernicus, dared to put forth the proposition that, in fact, it was the Earth that was moving around the sun! A lot of folks got pretty bent out of shape about it including the Church, which, at that time, held a great deal of political power. They charged Galileo with heresy. They wanted to kill him. Or, at least, torture him. They settled for keeping him under house arrest for the remaining years of his life. Today, we take it as established fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun. If you suggested otherwise, they wouldn't arrest you but they might refer you the 5th floor of Divine Providence.

You all know that I am a person who is blind. In many situations, that puts me at the mercy of you all, God help me. If I had a nickel for every time some person of vision said to me "go to your right. No, No, I mean left!" I'd be a rich man. One of the best things about being a person who is blind is that every day, you get smacked in the face with your own fallibility. I know how wrong I can be. If it were up to me to separate the weeds from the wheat, we'd be in trouble. And I suspect we all can be that wrong but we rarely want to admit it. One time, Kathy and I were at a movie. And as she usually does, Kathy was softly (so softly I could barely hear her) describing the visual parts of the movie to me. Well, the woman in front of us turned around and hissed "are you going to do that through the whole movie?" Of course, she didn't know why we were whispering, and to explain it to her would've just resulted in more talking so we took the expedient route for the rest of the film and just shut up. She thought we were merely being rude, so she indicted and convicted us. To her, we were weeds! But you know why we were conversing in the first place. So, would you have judged us as she did, or would you have judged more leniently?

We all see things differently, according to how much we know, or think we know about a particular situation. And maybe that's another reason why we didn't get the job of separating the wheat from the weeds. Oh, and the most obvious reason we didn't get that job? We ARE the wheat and the weeds! There's a sobering thought. Some of us may be weeds.

But which of us is which? If I were to flatly state that Mother Teresa is in Heaven, I doubt anyone would disagree with me. But if I were to state that Adolf Hitler is in Heaven, you'd probably be horrified! I admit it's an unsettling thought. But we just don't know the wheat from the weeds. It's not our job to know that.

What, then, is our job? We've said it before,

but it never hurts to be reminded. Our job is mentioned right there in our mission statement, To Make Christ Known. And there's a whole hungry world that needs to know about him and his love. We don't even have to go looking for it because it comes right through our own community and even right here to our own church.

What will we do when a stranger comes to St. Marks? Someone who doesn't look like us, or talk like us, or smell like us? Will we welcome them in Christ's name or judge them in ours? It's a challenge because we're most comfortable with those who remind us of ourselves. And then there's that statement from Jesus a few chapters earlier in Matthew, "judge not, lest you be judged." So, if we mess it up, do we become weeds? Well, we need have no fear because here's the good news. God, who will appoint the Angels to separate the wheat from the weeds and who will oversee their work, knows our hearts! He is the only one qualified to make those decisions. He will make them with love and mercy that we are not capable of.

So when we must make human judgements, imperfect though they may be, let us always try to see others and their motives through God's eyes, reflecting his love. Let us try to infuse those judgements with the same mercy he shows to us. And in those instances where we're not sure of the right answer, let us love!

And let us defer to God's unerring judgement because, in the end, the best that any of us will be able to do, is to throw ourselves on his loving mercy, knowing that we are all washed clean in the blood of his son, Jesus Christ!

Let everyone say, "Amen!"

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.