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6 “This is what the Lord says—
Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty:
I am the first and I am the last;
apart from me there is no God.
7 Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it.
Let him declare and lay out before me
what has happened since I established my ancient people,
and what is yet to come—
yes, let them foretell what will come.
8 Do not tremble, do not be afraid.
Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago?
You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me?
No, there is no other Rock; I know not one.”
17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
27 “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
29 “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
(Transcribed by TurboScribe)
Three passages of scripture to share with you this morning. An Old Testament reading from Isaiah, and then a short verse from Paul’s letter to the Romans, and then a passage from the New Testament on which the sermon will focus. From the 44th chapter of Isaiah, this is what the Lord says, Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty.
I am the first and the last, apart from me there is no God. Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and lay out before me what has happened since I established my ancient people, and what is yet to come.
Yes, let them foretell what will come. Do not tremble. Do not be afraid.
Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other rock. I know not one.
Two short verses from the 12th chapter of Romans. Do not repay anyone for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone.
If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. And from the 13th chapter of Matthew, Jesus tells a parable. The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while everyone was sleeping, the enemy came and sowed seeds among the wheat and went away.
When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. The owner’s servants came to him and said, Sir, didn’t you sow good seeds in your field? Where then did the weeds come from? An enemy did this, he replied. The servants asked, do you want us to go and pull them out? No, he answered, because while you are pulling out the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them.
Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time, I will tell the harvesters, first collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned. Then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.
Then he left the crowd and went into the house. Amen. Let us pray.
God of wisdom, your thoughts are not our thoughts and your ways are not our ways. As we listen to the scriptures, send your Holy Spirit to grant us understanding of what you desire and fresh resolve to do your will. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen. I may have mentioned this in past years. Much of the mid to end part of June, so last month, you will find me in a strawberry field.
From mid-June to the end of June, I make four to five trips to Brantwood Farms. It used to be their old location on Linden Road, now their new setup on German School Road. I go out there four or five times, pick the strawberries.
Sometimes I have a grandchild with me to help, so it takes longer. I take those berries home, clean them, and then make freezer jam, strawberry freezer jam. It’s really good.
Now I’m pausing here to look out there and say, how many of you are thinking, oh no, he’s going to bring out a trophy and talk about it. No, no, I have never won a trophy for my strawberry jam. Now you’re thinking, well, is it placed in the top 10? No, no, I’m, is it the people’s choice? Yes, people who are related to me really think it is wonderful strawberry jam.
And in July, this month, from about the beginning of July to now and maybe another week, I’ll go out to Jerry’s Berries. I love that out in Cope Town, Jerry’s Berries. It’s part of lots of hostas.
And I pick my raspberries there and I take that home and I make raspberry freezer jam. And I know some of you are thinking, oh, now he’s going to bring out the trophy for No, no, no, no trophies, no top 10. But again, it’s definitely the people’s choice amongst people who are related to me.
The strawberry field on Old German School Road and the raspberry patch in Cope Town are beautifully well-maintained fields. Tom and his family at Brantwood Farms and Glenda and her family in Jerry’s Berries, clearly it’s work that begins the previous fall, obviously not so much during the winter, but in the spring, the fields are, well, you do whatever you do to those patches. Because when I go out to pick that fruit, it’s beautiful.
The berries are beautiful. It’s just wonderful to be out there. But there are still weeds.
Even though all that has been done to prevent it, you still see some weeds in amongst the bushes or off to the side. It’s part of growing things. Any vegetable gardener, any flower gardener will tell you that.
Where you’re growing things, weeds show up. And that’s one reason I like this parable. Because even in a perfect strawberry field, even in a perfect raspberry, even in a perfect flower garden, even in a perfect vegetable garden, weeds are still there.
You don’t want them there. You did everything to prevent them from being there. They’re still there.
That’s why I like this parable. Because it seems to me to answer a question that Christians, especially when we get old enough to ask this question, why in a perfect, why in the world that God designed, why in a world where God loves us, why is there evil in this world? You and I aren’t evil people. God wants no one to be an evil person.
God has given us everything we need in this world. What are good, God-fearing people supposed to do about all the evil in the world? That may not be the question that was asked directly to Jesus. And it may not be the question Jesus is answering directly.
But it is the question behind the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Jesus tells this story. A farmer sowed good feed in a field.
But while everyone was asleep, an enemy, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and slipped away. When the wheat sprouted and produced grain, the weeds appeared as well. The servants came and asked the owner of the field, sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did all these weeds come from? That is a good question.
Later in the chapter, Jesus explains the parable. I didn’t read that part. I knew you saw where this was going.
He explains the parable. He says the field represents the world. And the world is weedy.
It’s corrupt. It’s not the way God intended it to be. No one has to convince us of that.
We watch cable news. We listen to the radio. We scroll through social media.
And we hear more stories than we want to hear about violence and war, abuse and greed, injustice, poverty, hatred, discrimination. We shake our heads at the enormous gap between the way the world ought to be and the way the world is. Where does all this evil come from? That’s a question answered in other stories in other parts.
But what we are to do about that, that’s what this parable answers. Now we might think, as the servants did, well, let’s get out into the field and pull up all those weeds by its roots. That’ll get rid of it.
It seems like a practical suggestion. And it is one, I’m pretty sure speaking to the gardeners in the group, it is one you actively employ in your vegetable garden and in your flower garden. But not in this parable and not in this field.
Because the owner of the field says, no, no, we’re not going to pull them out. Let both grow together until the harvest. In this story about evil in the world and God’s response to it, Jesus is telling us something that might be difficult to hear.
For now, God does not intend to uproot every evil thing immediately. God is not asking us to uproot every evil thing that we see immediately. God’s plan, at least for the present, is to let the wheat and the weeds grow together.
That’s the parable. That’s the parable Jesus tells. That is not easy to accept.
But that’s the lesson of the parable. Even though the world is full of weeds, even though there is corruption and wickedness, it is not our calling to pull out every evil weed ourselves. Why? Well, we remember what the owner told the servants.
Do not pull up the weeds, because while you are pulling up weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Oh, okay. We are reminded that there is always a chance that we will do more harm than good.
However unintended, there are situations where we might do more harm than good. The part of the reason, and the listeners would have understood this in Jesus’ time, they would have got this right away because of their, because it’s a small villages and connected to the rural area around them. If they weren’t farmers, they had they had family members who were farmers.
They knew that Jesus was talking about a specific kind of weed and wheat. The Latin name is here. I don’t know why I put it here.
I can’t pronounce it. So I’ll just, the, the weed is commonly called Darnell. And it’s an unusual grass that looks remarkably like wheat in its early growing stages.
It’s easy to mistake this weed for wheat as it’s growing. And that’s why Jesus used this parable and this example, because it fits into the life that you and I live. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between good and evil in the early stages.
Oh, I know later there’s lots of times we can tell what’s evil, but I’m talking about those times when we don’t have all the information and we, we don’t really understand what’s going on. Sometimes in trying to pull up with what we think is a weed, we discover too late that we’ve damaged the wheat. There’s another part of this story that’s always intrigued me.
And again, it’s one of those parts of the story. It’s just, it’s barely a sentence. It’s said, and then there’s no more comment on it, but it’s there for a reason.
The enemy sows the weeds and then slips away, leaves. The enemy is no longer part of the story. We, we, the enemy doesn’t feel the necessity to come back and sow more weeds, water the weeds to do anything else.
The enemy only had to plant the weeds. The damage is already done. There’s no need to stay around.
Scatter a few seeds of darkness, scatter a few seeds of fear, scatter a few seeds of misunderstandings, and let good people give in to fear and give in to darkness and give in to misunderstandings. And they’ll do the damage as they pull up the weeds and harm the wheat. Scatter enough weeds so that we become anxious, fearful, angry, impulsive enough, and then see what happens.
That’s why the enemy slips away, doesn’t have to do anything more. Unless, unless the owner says, wait, be still, trust me, let them grow together until the harvest. Let them grow together until the harvest.
Then I will tell the harvesters to gather the weeds to be burned and gather the wheat and put it in to my barn. The owner doesn’t like having weeds in the field. What, what farmer, what grower, what person who’s trying to nurture seeds into, into beauty and growth and fulfilment, what, what grower would want weeds in their field? No, no, no grower.
The farmer, the owner simply has a different way of dealing with them. He has a different plan. And that’s, that’s sometimes frustrating to servants who want to act now, who want to be impulsive.
And the owner says, wait, be patient. I have a plan. Jesus wants us to understand that this is God’s way of dealing with evil.
Not always immediately, but he will deal with it finally. This is way, God’s way of dealing with evil. Not partially, but God’s plan is to deal with it completely.
And Jesus would know. It’s not like the world that he came into was any better or worse than the world that you and I are living in right now. His world was full of weeds.
The disciples saw that. He saw that. His disciples saw that.
They were witnesses to poverty and injustice, oppression, disease, prejudice, violence. They saw it all. They experienced it.
Jesus and his disciples, they experienced everything that you and I have to deal with. The problems were real. Yet Jesus did not call on his followers to wage war against every weed.
Instead, he called them to live faithfully as wheat. And perhaps that’s, not perhaps, that is still our calling today. In a world full of weeds, perhaps the best strategy that we can adopt is the one that Paul said in the 12th chapter of Romans.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. The field is still full of weeds. I admit there’s some days that that’s all it seems to be full of.
It’s not true, but that’s what it feels like sometimes. But it’s also full of wheat. There is in fact more wheat than weeds.
The weeds just get our attention. God has not abandoned the field, nor has God forgotten the harvest. So let us live as children of the kingdom, trusting the gardener, sowing the good seed wherever we can, and waiting in hope for the day when Christ will make all things new.
Until that day, we overcome evil, not by fear or hatred, but by lives shaped by the love of God. Amen. And so be it.
