The Latest Is the First

8 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 11, July 23, 2023

Genesis 28:10-19a, Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23
Romans 8:12-25 Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Lectionary Link

In the enigmatic words of Jesus, "the last shall be first."  I think that this might be appropriately understood as the "latest shall be first." Why?  Because it is hard to conceive of an existence without time, an existence when there is no longer a before and after.  What might be called an ending is only the transition to a beginning of a different sort.

There is great temporal provincialism in the notion of the "latest is the first."  Why?  The latest is the now that we always live in and we can so privilege the now in a time egotism that we over-value our judgments of the current moment.  But how is the latest the first?  God, as the omni-becoming greatest with no rival is always the most supreme Latest who comprises the greatest possible synthesis of everything that has been, is, and might be.

We, who live in the now, share with God as sharing a very small portion of what it means to be the latest, and we become first in having the last say upon everything that we know which has come before.  We are the retroactive sorters of the traces of what we call the time before, the past events of our lives.

We become first by the accident of being the latest; those who have privilege to be like the wise scribes who bring forth new treasures as well as wisdom from what is old.  Being the latest is first but also a daunting privilege because we are heirs of what has happened and must cull the past and analyze the past and learn from it to bring forth what is new and best in our lives now.

And in being the latest in our particular time in our existence on earth, what do we discover about the life that has gone before us?  We find that everything that has happened before us is mixtures of lots of experiences, including some very good things and very bad things.  People have been very good and they have been very bad.  We ourselves, have known various states of goodness and badness in our own existence.

The parable of the weeds and the wheat is about the human condition of the great mixture in the diversity of occasions.  The wisdom of the words of Jesus is this:  It is impossible and unthinkable to think that we can weed and undo the past without destroying everything else in the field of existing beings.

So what is the chief task of us, who are the latest and who are now first in interpreting all of what has previously happened?  The chief task for us know is the hard task of patience.  "Oh, Drats!  Everything has not been perfect, and I have not been perfect.  Everything should be fixed now, immediately." Patience means that we are not and cannot be like action movie heroes and suddenly and quickly remove all the bad and evil people and circumstances which have faced people in the past and which face us now.

Patience is the preservation of the chief value of freedom which is what makes moral and spiritual choice truly valuable.  And what can be the result of being patient with what has heretofore happened?

Patience can result in inspired judgments about how things close to us need to be different going forward, especially  in better approximations of love and justice in the lives of more people.  And from the inspired judgments of how things can be better can flow the actions to make things better than they would be if we did not take the agency of patient wisdom to make judgments and actions in the direction of the better practice of love and justice

And how can we have patience when we are challenged by the teeming mixtures of so many things happening at once in our lives?  Like Jacob of old, we can ponder our mistake of forgetting or not knowing God as the divine ground of our lives.  Jacob about his past event realized, "God was there and I did not know it.  I did not live in the realization of living and moving and having my being in God."

Unfortunately, and fortunately, we mostly come to realize providence after the fact.  If we have enough after the fact realizations of providence, we may eventually learn to accept the always already divine presence, even when it does not seem to present itself as apparent present goodness for us in our lives.

In the parable of the weeds and the wheat, the situation gets resolved at the "end of the ages."  Since time means that there is no final end of ages, only continual births of new ages, the parable bespeaks of insightful moments when we attain wisdom events of putting together understanding of past and present with enlightened words and acts of love and justice in our lives now.

We pray for the end of ages of ignorance when good and evil can be sorted out and used as fertilizing energy for more fruitful love and justice in our lives today.

Let us accept the daunting task of being first, because we are the latest.  And this small latest in time of our lives, resides upon the greatest Latest of the divine, who comprehends all for the further sustenance of all.

We ask today for patience to bear with what is, not in resignation to what is evil, bad, and as yet unhealed; we ask for patience to come to wise judgments and actions for a better now and future.  Amen.