7 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 11, July 23, 2017
Genesis 28:10-19a, Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23
Romans 8:12-25 Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
The parable of the weeds and the wheat is in some ways a retelling of the Garden of Eden story and the human condition of knowing good and evil.
God created a perfect garden with innocent people. Innocent people are not morally advanced people because they are robots who do what is instinctually good and not knowing why. A baby's behavior is not bad, it is only cute. Innocence is cute and endearing.
We as adults know that we and the world has lost its innocence. The serpent in the Garden of Eden came and sowed seeds of dissention. The weed of sin entered the innocent lives of Adam and Eve when they disobeyed the law of God. God said, "Don't eat from this tree." They disobeyed and so the weed of sin entered and flourished. And the innocent children were evicted from paradise to live in a world where weeds and wheat were growing in competition with each other.
When each person comes into moral awareness, each discovers the profound experience of living in a world of freedom. We live in world of freedom that is mixed with good and bad and everything in between. The mixture of good and bad in a world of freedom is so interwoven that it is impossible to surgically remove the sources of what is bad without also injuring what is good.
When one plants a garden, one can wait too long to do some weeding and when one finally gets to pulling the weeds, one can find their roots so interwoven with the intended plants that to pull the weed means that the good plant is pulled up as well.
The conditions of freedom are so set in this world that to "smart bomb" all that evil and bad in this world is impossible; there is always collateral damage done to what is good and the condition of freedom itself.
The message of the parable of the wheat and the weeds is that God, the one who planted this world, is very patient to wait for harvest to sort things out. God is not a panicky farmer; God is a patient farmer.
We, as modern people, are not always very patient. Modern science and technology have made us feel the need for speed. We upgrade our computers and our internet access to increase our speed of access. Modern life with its need for speed does not want to wait for nature. We want ripe tomatoes year round in any location; we don't want to be limited to what can grow in a certain place at a certain time.
In our story lives, we live by time-lapsed presentations. In one movie lasting an hour and a half, an action adventure hero can win lots of battles against bad guys with such surgical precision and save the world from nuclear destruction. We get used to time-lapsed presentations. Time-lapsed presentations are not actual time. Real life is slow and cyclical. Because we live our lives with too many time-lapsed presentations, we can get real impatient with the uneven distribution of good and bad that is found in our world. The experience of rage is this drive to think that one could suddenly correct what is bad in this world with a single act of intervening violence.
A farmer lives under the both the promise and threat of freedom. A crop can turn out to be bountiful or it can end up being destroyed or minimal based upon other conditions.
In our rage, we sometimes wish that all that is evil and bad could just be "smart bombed" out of existence, but what does this really mean? If all that is evil and bad could be "smart bombed" out existence, it would mean the end of freedom as the very underpinning of human significance.
God created in freedom. God is patient in tolerating the conditions of freedom. There are weeds and wheat that will coexist in the field until harvest. There are weeds and wheat in our personal and social worlds that co-exist; things do not always get sorted out immediately. How is it that slavery and the subjugation of women co-existed with a belief in God for so long? There are many weeds in human history that we did not know were weeds until the time came for justice to be extended to sort out and consign inhumane treatment to arrive at its end. Enlightened human society has and is arising to condemn slavery and the subjugation of women as unworthy of human dignity. In the cycle of farming there is a harvest phase when the good and bad is sorted out. In human experience, we often say, "hindsight is 20/20." Sometimes we don't understand the past until later in the future. Jacob was running away from home because his brother was angry at him. On his journey, he fell asleep and had his "Jacob's ladder" dream. When he woke up, he thought, God was there and I did not know it. In our mixed lives of good things and bad things, sometimes we can only recognize that God was with us at a later time. Sometimes we can seem overwhelmed by what is apparently going wrong that we cannot discern God's presence. In patience we can learn to wait for things to be sorted out from our past and we can come to have this hindsight wisdom: God was there but I did not recognize God was there.
St. Paul in his writing about the spiritual psychology of a person, taught that we as human beings have the mixture of flesh and spirit. We are not ghosts. We have bodies and in the training of our bodies anchored by desire we come to know that we can do what is right and what is wrong. The same energy of desire which can propel us to do good works and also be used as energy to drive wrong things that we do. St. Paul writes about having a graceful patience with ourselves as we seek to have our desire directed by God's Spirit toward that which is good and worthy. If we get so obsessed about our flesh and its weak tendency, we may want to shut off all functions. We can get paralyzed if we begin to think that all that we desire and do is somehow wrong or bad. Temporary states of depression are characterized by this shutting down of all desire because of the fear of unsatisfactory outcomes.
The meaning of the parable of the weeds and the wheat for me is that God who is pure freedom and creativity respects the genuine freedom that is evident in our lives. Freedom happens. And in freedom the good and the bad occur. And while we work to avoid what is bad do what is good, we can never kill off the possibility of the bad happening. The patience of God is a respect for growth and perfection.
So let me leave you with this for today: Let us respect the freedom for anything to happen in this world. Such freedom is the sun that shines on the good and the bad. Respect freedom but expect cycles within freedom to do some significant sorting of the values of good and evil in our lives. Harvest time allows the sorting of the wheat and weeds. The harvest cycle in our lives are when we are able to reap the good outcomes that have arisen even in the face of serious opposition. Learn patience with this world and with your life. Do not let the time-lapsed habits of modern life bring us to the rage of thinking that we can smart bomb all that is bad and evil out of our lives or our world. As a farmer is patient for the harvest, let us be patient in waiting for the times when we sort the good and the bad in significant ways.
And finally, let us create a better past through a faithful present. If we are faithful in the present, we can re-write our past as being providential because of current outcomes. We can come to the same hindsight wisdom that Jacob had about a memorable night of dream-filled sleep. "Surely God is in this place and I did not know it." May God help us to this insight: "Surely God has been in all of the times and places of my life, even when I did not know. But now I do, and everything past is now providential for what is now." Amen.
Genesis 28:10-19a, Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23
Romans 8:12-25 Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
The parable of the weeds and the wheat is in some ways a retelling of the Garden of Eden story and the human condition of knowing good and evil.
God created a perfect garden with innocent people. Innocent people are not morally advanced people because they are robots who do what is instinctually good and not knowing why. A baby's behavior is not bad, it is only cute. Innocence is cute and endearing.
We as adults know that we and the world has lost its innocence. The serpent in the Garden of Eden came and sowed seeds of dissention. The weed of sin entered the innocent lives of Adam and Eve when they disobeyed the law of God. God said, "Don't eat from this tree." They disobeyed and so the weed of sin entered and flourished. And the innocent children were evicted from paradise to live in a world where weeds and wheat were growing in competition with each other.
When each person comes into moral awareness, each discovers the profound experience of living in a world of freedom. We live in world of freedom that is mixed with good and bad and everything in between. The mixture of good and bad in a world of freedom is so interwoven that it is impossible to surgically remove the sources of what is bad without also injuring what is good.
When one plants a garden, one can wait too long to do some weeding and when one finally gets to pulling the weeds, one can find their roots so interwoven with the intended plants that to pull the weed means that the good plant is pulled up as well.
The conditions of freedom are so set in this world that to "smart bomb" all that evil and bad in this world is impossible; there is always collateral damage done to what is good and the condition of freedom itself.
The message of the parable of the wheat and the weeds is that God, the one who planted this world, is very patient to wait for harvest to sort things out. God is not a panicky farmer; God is a patient farmer.
We, as modern people, are not always very patient. Modern science and technology have made us feel the need for speed. We upgrade our computers and our internet access to increase our speed of access. Modern life with its need for speed does not want to wait for nature. We want ripe tomatoes year round in any location; we don't want to be limited to what can grow in a certain place at a certain time.
In our story lives, we live by time-lapsed presentations. In one movie lasting an hour and a half, an action adventure hero can win lots of battles against bad guys with such surgical precision and save the world from nuclear destruction. We get used to time-lapsed presentations. Time-lapsed presentations are not actual time. Real life is slow and cyclical. Because we live our lives with too many time-lapsed presentations, we can get real impatient with the uneven distribution of good and bad that is found in our world. The experience of rage is this drive to think that one could suddenly correct what is bad in this world with a single act of intervening violence.
A farmer lives under the both the promise and threat of freedom. A crop can turn out to be bountiful or it can end up being destroyed or minimal based upon other conditions.
In our rage, we sometimes wish that all that is evil and bad could just be "smart bombed" out of existence, but what does this really mean? If all that is evil and bad could be "smart bombed" out existence, it would mean the end of freedom as the very underpinning of human significance.
God created in freedom. God is patient in tolerating the conditions of freedom. There are weeds and wheat that will coexist in the field until harvest. There are weeds and wheat in our personal and social worlds that co-exist; things do not always get sorted out immediately. How is it that slavery and the subjugation of women co-existed with a belief in God for so long? There are many weeds in human history that we did not know were weeds until the time came for justice to be extended to sort out and consign inhumane treatment to arrive at its end. Enlightened human society has and is arising to condemn slavery and the subjugation of women as unworthy of human dignity. In the cycle of farming there is a harvest phase when the good and bad is sorted out. In human experience, we often say, "hindsight is 20/20." Sometimes we don't understand the past until later in the future. Jacob was running away from home because his brother was angry at him. On his journey, he fell asleep and had his "Jacob's ladder" dream. When he woke up, he thought, God was there and I did not know it. In our mixed lives of good things and bad things, sometimes we can only recognize that God was with us at a later time. Sometimes we can seem overwhelmed by what is apparently going wrong that we cannot discern God's presence. In patience we can learn to wait for things to be sorted out from our past and we can come to have this hindsight wisdom: God was there but I did not recognize God was there.
St. Paul in his writing about the spiritual psychology of a person, taught that we as human beings have the mixture of flesh and spirit. We are not ghosts. We have bodies and in the training of our bodies anchored by desire we come to know that we can do what is right and what is wrong. The same energy of desire which can propel us to do good works and also be used as energy to drive wrong things that we do. St. Paul writes about having a graceful patience with ourselves as we seek to have our desire directed by God's Spirit toward that which is good and worthy. If we get so obsessed about our flesh and its weak tendency, we may want to shut off all functions. We can get paralyzed if we begin to think that all that we desire and do is somehow wrong or bad. Temporary states of depression are characterized by this shutting down of all desire because of the fear of unsatisfactory outcomes.
The meaning of the parable of the weeds and the wheat for me is that God who is pure freedom and creativity respects the genuine freedom that is evident in our lives. Freedom happens. And in freedom the good and the bad occur. And while we work to avoid what is bad do what is good, we can never kill off the possibility of the bad happening. The patience of God is a respect for growth and perfection.
So let me leave you with this for today: Let us respect the freedom for anything to happen in this world. Such freedom is the sun that shines on the good and the bad. Respect freedom but expect cycles within freedom to do some significant sorting of the values of good and evil in our lives. Harvest time allows the sorting of the wheat and weeds. The harvest cycle in our lives are when we are able to reap the good outcomes that have arisen even in the face of serious opposition. Learn patience with this world and with your life. Do not let the time-lapsed habits of modern life bring us to the rage of thinking that we can smart bomb all that is bad and evil out of our lives or our world. As a farmer is patient for the harvest, let us be patient in waiting for the times when we sort the good and the bad in significant ways.
And finally, let us create a better past through a faithful present. If we are faithful in the present, we can re-write our past as being providential because of current outcomes. We can come to the same hindsight wisdom that Jacob had about a memorable night of dream-filled sleep. "Surely God is in this place and I did not know it." May God help us to this insight: "Surely God has been in all of the times and places of my life, even when I did not know. But now I do, and everything past is now providential for what is now." Amen.
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