10 PENTECOST, PROPER 11

SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE

THE REV. ANNE G. STANLEY

20 JULY 2008

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Genesis 28:10-19a; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

We continue this week with Jesus’ agricultural parables. Jesus’ stories about crops. And about ourselves as gardeners.  How fitting for us in the northern hemisphere as we exult, I am  hoping, in our own gardens or benefitting from the produce of the gardens around us.

Last week we listened as Jesus told us about the reckless sower, the farmer who scattered seed randomly, here and there, with no care for where the seeds landed. As that sower sowed his seeds, Jesus was saying, so also does God broadcast God’s love, knowing that sometimes people will hear it and take it in, and sometimes it falls on deaf ears, like the unreceptive soil in the parable. In the same bold way we are to go and spread the gospel everywhere we go  in what we do and what we say.

Today it’s the story of bad crops, the weeds, and what we do when  we discover them growing along with the good, usable crops, the ones we want. The ones we’ve waited for all winter long! And what do we do about this nettlesome problem? Surely we should figure out ways to dupe the weeds, ways to dupe the trickster weed-planter who puts them there in the first place. Surely we should find ways to get rid of the weeds so the good plantings can thrive.

Once again this week, as last week, Jesus turns things upside down, telling us not to worry too much. Telling us to be patient. Showing us that this is how it is in God’s realm, for the time being. The good crops growing together with the weeds, the wheat AND the tares together. 

Once again, Jesus tells us to be patient. That the wheat will survive in spite of the weeds. That excessive pulling in our frenzy to get rid of the bad stuff can disrupt the roots of the very plants we want to save. I have found that out with my beans. Telling us that in the fullness of God’s own time, the weeds and the wheat will be separated according  to God’s own desire, not ours.

As with our gardens, so also with the world and so also with the church.  Have patience, this parable tells us. Jesus never suggests that we be passive in the face of violence and injustice and cruelty, of course. Jesus DOES insist, that we  take great care with our weeding, with our judging and punishing. Watch out, he says for premature culling.

“To root out the tares, wrote Charles Kingsley in 1899, “to root out the tares, to put down bad men(sic) and wrong thoughts by force is one of the earliest religious instincts.”

That instinct survives to this day across the church. In our own Anglican tradition, we can observe it playing out in a very visible and audible way these days: over the ways people castigate others who understand and interpret the Bible differently from themselves, over the place of women in the church, over the place of gays and lesbians in the church.  New Hampshire’s bishop, Gene Robinson, was not invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury to attend the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops, meeting in England at this time. Bishop Robinson has been weeded out.  Keeping out this bishop-weed flies in the face, in my opinion, of God’s generous welcome of all into the embrace of the kingdom.

Priests of several congregations in England and Scotland have invited Bishop Robinson to preach and celebrate in their churches anyway. And he has accepted their invitations. Just in, is a message from one of the many observers at the Lambeth Conference. James Naughton is the Canon of Communications in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. He writes about a parishioner in the church in Putney, near London, where Bishop Robinson preached last Sunday. He tells what he saw there on that day.

“X is a young person. I first caught sight of X at St. Mary’s, Putney, on Sunday (where Bp. Gene Robinson preached)….I later learned from a member of (the parish) that X is very devout and very active in the parish, as is X’s family. Not long ago, X came out (as a gay person) a difficult moment in any life, compounded by the complications of X’s nerve disease.

Gene Robinson has been a beacon for X, the member of X’s parish told me…Remaining in the church, a lifelong source of hope and comfort, has given X strength for an extremely difficult journey…

X and others like X remain in the church, or come into the church because they believe they can trust a church that counts (Bishop) Gene among its leaders…Think of…all the people who long to feel the love of God and experience the support of their Church, but who can feel neither, in most of the Anglican Communion.

To argue against gay bishops and gay clergy is to argue against a church that can reach out effectively to people like X. It is to argue that the good Gene has done in this person’s life is outweighed by the necessity of preserving a bitterly contested interpretation of the Scriptures. It is to argue that God endorses the concept of acceptable casualties, and it is not troubled if X, and others like X, are among them.”

In the context of today’s parable, it is to argue for getting rid of the weeds, which is precisely what Jesus tells us NOT to do.

Many of you heard Daniel Moses last week here in this room, here at our invitation to talk about Seeds of Peace Camp here in Otisfield—the huge, mighty effort to bring young people from all over the world, from those places that experience conflict with other nations, and to give these young people the skills of reconciling dialogue, training them to be leaders in sowing peace in their time in their own countries in the community of the world. Daniel spoke passionately of the work done with the teen-aged campers, the Seeds, the most important work being that of showing them the human face of their enemies. The work of showing them how the real way of peace is NOT ruthlessly routing the enemy, the work of showing them ways of living together WITH their perceived enemy, not simply eradicating them.

And guess what? In today’s story, the farmer has the last word.  He gathers the weeds at the end of the harvest and burns them, thus providing for himself and his family fuel for warmth and for cooking, while at the same time munching on bread made from his crop of wheat. The weeds are a good thing after all, although his neighbors had told him to get rid of them. What a waste that would have been. In the end, the farmer has the last word!

It is God who has the ultimate last word; God, who does the job of separating the wheat from the weeds at the end of God’s harvest. It is God who is the final judge, not us. For this meantime we are told to be patient and make the best of all we have.