Wheat in the Field

The texts for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost can be found here.

The Sixth Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 11, Year A

July 20, 2014

The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell

Good morning!

Before we jump into the texts we have placed in front of us this morning, I have something to tell you – I really missed you!

Truth be told, while I am grateful for the time away, I am glad to be back in my parish home and to see all of you this morning.  And even though he is taking a well-deserved Sunday off, I want to thank Fr. Larry for making it so easy to be away for a couple of weeks.  It is a gift to have Larry as a partner in ministry in this parish.

I also want you to know what a gift you are.  In my time away I visited three different churches ranging from a small rural parish in Northern Virginia to the Washington National Cathedral.  Not one of them had anything on this parish – Holy Spirit in Dripping Springs. 

I think it is important to be reminded of that every once in a while.  This place and the people of this parish are very much a gift to me just as you are a gift to each other.  There is no better place that you or I could be on this Sunday morning. 

So for me this week, it has been the return to a normal schedule and routine.  And for the most part, that has felt good and been welcome, but there is one thing, one part of my routine that I have not enjoyed coming home to.

Every morning as I ready myself to leave the house, I open an app on my phone that gives me audio snippets of the day’s headline news.  While I was away I dropped this habit, but as soon as I returned I picked it up again. 

The news comes from a variety of sources, and though they are very brief on detail, they always look to fill me in on the bad news that happened since I went to bed the night before.  Rarely, if ever, are the stories about good news.  It won’t surprise you that the stories I left behind are the same stories that I picked up two weeks later.

Gaza has fired more rockets into Israeli territory, and Israel responds with its own force.

Tensions escalate between Ukraine and Eastern Separatists as the US and Russia lob accusations of meddling in foreign affairs and intensifying the violence.

Meanwhile a passenger jet is shot down over Ukraine – who and why someone would do this is still under investigation.

Syria is still in crisis, as is Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. 

And in our own backyard – indeed in our own diocese – children are arriving on our border as refugees and our leaders in Washington seem to be at a stalemate on what to do or how to respond.

I’m sure you could add to this list, as could I, but these are the headlines around the world from this past week.  Not much has changed, and if I were to look back six months or a year ago, or even ten years ago, the locations might be different, but the sentiments would be the same.

What these snippets can’t tell me is the complexity of the issues that surround each of those headlines.  I can get a sense of it when the bias of one news company is heard against another, but even without that, I know there are no easy solutions.

Israel has a right to expect that it should be free from attack and defend itself when that right is violated. And yet many of the policies designed to ensure Israel’s safety are also extremely oppressive to the rights and freedoms of its neighbors.  Both Muslims and Christians suffer as a result of Israel’s walls, and border checkpoints, and economic sanctions.  And the result is that every so often that oppression emboldens radical extremists to commit senseless acts of violence.

In the case of Egypt, or Syria, and even to some extent the Ukraine, it is hard to know who the good guys are and who wears the black hat.  Most of the time it looks like both sides show little potential for good.

Or how does a government respond to the desperate act of children travelling 1,000 miles north with the hope that there is a chance for a better life?  How do you make policies that balance a system that becoming more and more overloaded with each passing day, with the very real fact that these are children who need care?

All of this to say that there are no easy answers, and I am the last to say that I have those answers.

But this isn’t a political sermon.  The truth is that in times of crisis, our lives are not much different than the headline news.  There too, in the midst of the brokenness, there aren’t easy answers or instant fixes.

That’s the whole lesson of the book of Job.  Job, a righteous man who looses everything he has, finds some very unhelpful friends that try to explain away or fix his situation with nothing more than platitudes or neatly contrived theories. 

Perhaps you’ve been there before – and if you have you know the feeling.  Our problems, not unlike the world’s problems, are complex.  Oftentimes there are no solutions, and that can leave us feeling lost, or helpless, or empty, or alone.

Jesus tells a seemingly simple story about wheat and weeds.  Someone sows good seed in the field only to find that once the plants have begun to mature that an enemy had sown weeds amongst the wheat.

There’s an interesting theory that the weeds that Jesus was referring to was the darnel plant, also called false wheat.  As it grows that plant looks very much like wheat and it is only when the head begins to sprout that one can tell the difference.  In the mean time the darnel is very aggressive, and it chokes out the wheat.  At the same time darnel is toxic and if combined with the harvested wheat ruins the harvest.

The slaves are at a loss of what to do.  From their point of view, the crop is ruined.  There are no good solutions, no easy answers.  What should they do?  Pull them up now destroying the vast majority of the crop?

Instead, their master tells them to allow them to grow together, and when the time comes, the reapers will collect the weeds first to be burned, and then will gather the wheat into the barn.

Like it or not, this is an apocalyptic parable, a parable of final judgment.  But it is not the doom and gloom that some fire and brimstone folks like to talk about.  It is, rather, good news. 

It acknowledges that sin and evil are very real powers in this world – a reality that we don’t have to look very far to see.  In a world where wheat and weeds are growing side by side, there will be problems that are beyond our capacity to solve.  The easy answer of pulling the weeds now would do violence to the good wheat, and inevitably do more harm than good.  And so there is no other option but to wait.

But this isn’t a wait and see, but rather a patient waiting with the hopeful expectation that God will, in the end, sort it all out.  The parable is clear it is not the slaves that will do the reaping or the sorting it out, but rather God’s reapers, the angels that he sends to do that task. 

This parable is good news because it gives hope.  Hope that those problems that frustrate us will eventually be set right. Hope that evil will finally be put to flight and goodness and righteousness will reign.  Hope that the world’s problems don’t depend on us, but rather it is God who will set it right.

Yet, the parable does not give us a pass to be complacent.  The seed that has been sown by the master must continue to grow.  Despite the weeds constantly looking to choke the wheat, the wheat must continue to struggle to bear fruit.  The reaper will come, and when he comes the wheat is what he will gather into the barn. 

Our lives of faith do matter, they matter for us and they matter for the field in which we are planted.

I really am glad to see you this morning – not simply because you are all nice people and I love you like my family, though I do, and not simply because I missed you, though I did – but because you, gathered together in this place every Sunday morning remind me that there is wheat in the field. 

Despite those headlines that want to point my attention only to the weeds, I see in you that God has a different view and a different plan.  I see in you that the problems that I face and the problems of the world are indeed being worked out by the one who planted good seed in his field.  I see in you the hope that is promised in this parable. 

That is what I mean when I say that you are a gift, both to me and to each other.

In a moment, when we gather around the table, recalling and giving thanks for God’s ultimate plan for salvation, know that you are a part of that story as well.  Whether you came weighed down by the world’s problems and those of your own, or you came blissfully unaware, give thanks for the fact that God has, is, and will continue to set things right.  Give thanks for the reminder that God has planted good seed, in this community and in the thousands of others that gather together this morning.  Give thanks for the opportunity to be nourished and to grow, week by week, being formed more and more into who God created you to be.  And finally, go out from here giving thanks, being the wheat in God’s field.  Amen.