Sermon by the Rev Ruth Patterson, Methodist Ecumenical Canon, in St Anne’s Cathedral on July 23 2017
Have you a favourite book?
One of mine is a book of nursery rhymes bought when our boys where little - I like it because of the illustrations - one of the prettiest goes with the Nursery Rhyme
Mary, Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockleshells
And pretty maids all in a row.
I wish my garden were like the one illustrated with all its flowers in pretty rows and nothing out of place. Last week when we arrived home from holiday, the garden was a mess. The flowers were there but also lots of weeds. A visitor on Monday night as they were leaving pointed to a container at the edge of the path and said “You do know Ruth that those are weeds”. Now some would say that weeds are just flowers in the wrong place but even so we all spend a lot of time weeding - and yet still they grow, especially if the garden is left unattended for a while
So often our lives are like that as well. In amongst all that is good, healthy and pretty, there are the difficult situations, the sadness’s, the heartaches, the things that we cannot fathom or do not understand.
How often has some one said to you “If God is so good, why is there so much evil in the world or why did that thing happen”? We only have to watch the television news or read a newspaper to see that we live in a world, where the desire for good to prevail is frequently frustrated and where despite the best attempts of many terrible things still happen.
In the gospel reading this morning it is not a flowerbed that has been infected by the presence of unwanted weeds but a field of wheat. Jesus as he tells the parable draws a picture of a hard working master and his servants. Of a field sown with the best seed and we can understand how at the end of the day all involved would be satisfied with the work that has been completed. But later a neighbour under the cover of darkness sneaks in and sows weeds in the midst of the wheat crop.
The Greek word for weeds is “zizania” which is a very particular type of weed that looks just like wheat as it is growing up. Today they would be called “darnel” wheat and, in the early stages of growth, are indistinguishable from wheat. You couldn’t tell them apart. So, you wouldn’t know there was darnel growing in your field until the stalks started to produce, and then it was too late, because the roots would be so interwoven that to pull up the weeds would pull up the wheat also. Add to this the fact that the seeds of the bearded darnel were poisonous, any inclusion in bread would cause dizziness, slurred speech, vomiting and other nasty stomach symptoms. So the presence of the weeds causes consternation and concern and the weeds and the wheat will need to be separated.
Perhaps the picture that Jesus is trying to paint to the disciples, is that Kingdom of Heaven (God) is here, God has broken into the world, he has shown his love in Jesus. There are parts of the kingdom present but until Jesus comes again it is still not fully established and wheat and weeds will be found side by side. That was the reality of world that the disciples lived in and it is also our reality. Good and bad stand side by side, in our world, in the church and even in each of our lives. In light of this the responses of the servants in the parable are so often the responses, the questions that we make and ask in our own lives.
Where, then, did these weeds come from?”
The servants know that the master has planted good seed. There is nothing inferior or faulty with the seed. It is not like the packet of forgotten wildflower seeds that I recently found at the bottom of a box, which was overlooked when we moved last year. Those seeds are long past their use by date and may or may not germinate if planted.
The seed in the parable is the best, in the explanation that is included with the parable it is the Son of Man, it is Jesus who is sowing the wheat seed and when we think of his life, his words, his actions, his care of people we see seeds of love, of life in all its fullness, of grace and beauty so the presence of anything else would be shocking.
That is why there is urgency to their question. They want to know what happened and who is responsible. That’s also what we want to know when we discover our equivalent of weeds in the world around us, in the church, in our lives. We want an explanation and increasingly in our society someone we can blame, hold accountable, and even punish.
In the parable Jesus shows the master, as disinterested in this approach. He doesn’t give it much time or attention.“ An enemy has done this,” he says. That’s it. He doesn’t explain it. He doesn’t identify or name the enemy. He doesn’t give instructions to find, drive out, and punish this enemy.
Why? Because the good news is, all is not lost - God’s kingdom and God’s presence is still there.
Just as a little candle light in the darkest night can be seen for miles and the darkness is overcome. The presence of the weeds does not over come or undo either the sowing of the good seed, the actions of the master, or the eventual harvest of the crop.
The weeds do not over come or make absent God’s kingdom - it may not be the kingdom in all its fullness but it is still God’s kingdom.
All of our readings today have pointed to the presence of God in our lives - even when we do not perceive it or fully understand what is happening. In Genesis, Jacob in his struggle acknowledges that God is present he had just not realised it. The Psalm reminded us that there is nowhere we go that God’s spirit is not with us. Paul in Romans, talks about creation groaning in order to bring about the new order. In the groaning, there are still things that are not as they should be but it does not mean that God is not present or does not care, there is still hope.
So then
What to do with the weeds?
Surely something needs to be done with the weeds - surely a stand needs to be made, boundaries set.
Again in the parable Jesus seems to be suggesting that there is a time when both will live side by side. When I was young, we lived in the country. One of the best times of the year was harvest time. One of the harvest hymns picks up this idea of growing together:
All the world is God's own field,
fruit as praise to God we yield;
wheat and tares together sown
are to joy or sorrow grown;
first the blade and then the ear,
then the full corn shall appear;
Lord of harvest, grant that we
wholesome grain and pure may be.
(Come, Ye Thankful People, Come Henry Alford, 1810-1871)
Remember nothing can be done - it is impossible to separate weeds and wheat pre harvest as in their growing their roots will be entwined. Only at harvest time will weed and wheat be fully revealed.
In a sense there is a lesson here about judgment - just as it was not up to the servants to decide what constituted wheat or weed, it was the master. So too we are to be careful about judging.
In all of us there is potential for creativity, goodness and great actions but there is also the potential for great destruction. The same fire that warms, burns. The same water that quenches our thirst can drown. We are living in that groaning world of the Romans reading and so there is tension in our lives. Paul writing else where in Romans talks about wanting to do good but not managing it- “ For what I do is not the good I want to do; no the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:19 NIV)
Our world, the church, our lives are a mixture not of black and white but of every possible shade of grey. Often our best actions are tainted with our own selfish motives, and so compromised; and our worst actions are sometimes mingled with good. In the same field where there is good, there is also evil.
We know how it is supposed to be. We know that in Christ we are called to be holy. Yet, at the same time we know that we are weak, and failing, and we sin. How do we balance this? We don’t. There’s tension all the way through our lives. But there is also grace, grace seen in God, like the master, waiting patiently until the harvest. So good is not destroyed whilst uprooting the weeds, so that we come freely to choose what is good as the hymn writer says - “Lord of harvest, grant that we wholesome grain and pure may be.”
Because there will be
The Harvest
We do live in a world, in which evil seems at times to be more powerful than good. But the reading also reminds us that God does not intend evil to remain forever; there will be a reckoning.
For some this may be difficult - the picture that is painted in the explanation part of the reading is pretty graphic. We see Jesus returning to this theme again and again in other parables and in his teaching so there is no escaping the inevitability or the consequences of it.
But until the Harvest – we are reminded, that no matter how things are now God is with us. To remember there will be a day when the weeds and the wheat of our world, the church and our lives will be sorted and in that sorting God not us is the judge.
To live as best we can, with lives that are focused on and surrendered to God, allowing the Holy Spirit to move in our lives to grow those first fruits of creation, love and goodness, honesty and compassion, to so the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our living producing a crop of wheat not weeds. The philosopher Meister Eckhart wrote,‘The seed of an apple grows into an apple tree; the seed of a hazel grows into a hazel tree; the seed of God grows into God’.
To be thankful that so often we can look back on our own lives, our mistakes and have had the time and the opportunity to change and make amends and to hold fast to God’s love and grace shown to us and through his Holy Spirit show that love and grace to others.
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