The Psalm : Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24
O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night," even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
The Old Testament Lesson : Genesis 28:10-19a
Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the Lord stood beside him and said, "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, "Surely the Lord is in this place-- and I did not know it!" And he was afraid, and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called that place Bethel; but the name of the city was Luz at the first.
The Epistle Lesson: Romans 8:12-25
So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh-for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ--if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
The Gospel Lesson: Matthew 13:24-30,36-43
He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?' He answered, 'An enemy has done this.' The slaves said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he replied, 'No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"
Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field." He answered, "The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!
"All That Enters In"
Last Sunday we heard the parable of the sower and the seed - and discovered that God according to Jesus has some peculiar farming techniques. This week - with the parable of the weeds in the garden - we discover once again that God's method of farming is different than ours - exhibiting far more tolerance and in the end swift and final judgment.
I've noticed that there are many situations in life where "weedy" problems are allowed to continue for long periods of time with no tremendous negative ramifications. For example, I have a hard time parting with old clothes. They tend to accumulate in the closet, the drawers, and the storage trunks despite the fact that they may be a little tighter than I remember, or worn and or faded past the point of being acceptable in most settings. Still I think I'll need them again someday, or find a place where I can still use them for work around the house or yard. It's a problem that doesn't cause any more harm than taking up space.
In such a situation God's holding off until the harvest makes perfect sense. You can always bundle old clothes up on a rainy day when you have nothing better to do than organize your sock drawer.
But there are other situations where the evil among us, even briefly can be fatal. That suspicious passenger on the airplane, the armed terrorist in the crowded shopping mall, the sexual predator lurking outside your home…who protects us from these? Most nights it's obvious from one glance at the front page that not everyone is protected!
So what is being suggested to us in this difficult teaching, where hard work and honest intentions seem thwarted by an inescapable evil despite the best of efforts?
Several years ago I was in a pastoral support group which included a rabbi. We had been discussing the use of parables in scripture and we got to discussing Jesus' use of that teaching technique. This particular story came up.
The rabbi told us that there is a similar parable recorded in the Talmud and that there is a midrashic gloss, a kind of "personal spin" for added teaching purposes if you will, in which, during the next planting season, the Master's steward stays up at night to see exactly who it is who comes and sows the bad seed.
To his surprise, it is the Master, walking in his sleep as if a dead man! The rabbinic use of the tale, thus, is to focus attention on how we have to accept at least some responsibility for both the good and the bad that occurs in our lives because it exists in all of us.
In that same vein it occurs to me that another aspect of this passage would be a warning about the danger of a race to judgment. Those of us who garden know how often a seedling looks like a weed, and a weed in it's early stages may appear to be quite an attractive plant. One common definition of a weed is "anything a farmer doesn't want at harvest time." Corn is a weed in a soybean field!
How quickly do we judge ourselves as being worthy of being "harvested" while others are judged to be weeds? How often do we see only the failings in our lives and live oblivious to the potential victory or inherent goodness that God has placed within our grasp?
Martin Luther said that all of us are both 'saint' and 'sinner'... all of us have our good sides... all of us have things about us that are special, beautiful, loving, and good... but we also all have the side of ourselves that has not yet been weeded out... that side we hide away from the world... and sometimes even hide from ourselves...
It always comes out of course, and usually at a very inconvenient time, but even those revelations can be the doorway to a new destiny.
In a similar way Sometimes our "goodness" or the true value of a particular aspect of our life comes as a big surprise. "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it," says Jacob.
How aware or unaware of God's presence are we?
As we know from the previous weeks' lessons, Jacob's early character and the life he lived certainly did not warrant the gift of God's presence, yet it was there all along. Later in his story, in chapter 32, as he prepared to be reunited with Esau in an attempt to reconcile his earlier wrong-doings, he again unexpectedly encountered God. That time it was in the middle of the night "wrestling" with "goodness" to name it for what it really was.
In today's story it was on the point of leaving home that he unexpectedly became aware of "the holy", and in the second it was on the point of returning. When we depart from the place where we truly belong, from the person we were meant to be, or when we are just about to come back to our senses, perhaps we most often struggle with our own understandings of good and evil.
Sometimes the most obvious is then a big revelation to us. For example, we become aware of the fact that the world was here long before we were here to notice it. Though such a statement seems undeniably logical, we all sometimes tend to think and act as if the opposite were true. We attempt to reinvent the wheel. We approach circumstances and events as if they were the proverbial blank slate awaiting our acts of personal involvement and reasoning to give them their order and meaning.
The psalmist not only asserts that God IS to be found in all the unexpected places of our lives, but that God is everywhere, always has been, and that nothing can separate us from the Godly seeds of goodness that were originally scattered within us all. But we must struggle to do our part, sometimes with backbreaking effort, sometimes with confessional honesty and reevaluation, and sometimes simply with patient waiting.
There is a story that comes out of the Cherokee tradition involving an old man in conversation with his grandson. He was telling him about a fierce battle that was going on inside himself. He said, "My son, it is between 2 wolves."
One is pure evil: made up of anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, and ego...The other is very good: powered by joy, peace, love hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith." They are locked jaw to jaw as they seek to throw the other to the ground.
The grandson sat wide-eyed for a for a moment and then asked, "Which wolf wins?"
And the old Cherokee simply replied, " The one I feed."
May God grant us the wisdom to choose to feed the best in our being, in order that in the end we too may hear "Well done, good and faithful servant."
The Pastoral Prayer:
Gracious God, we thank you for your love - a love so great that you have mercy towards all people and give to them the time they need to come to you and to open their hearts to the good seed you want to plant in them. Grant that our lives may be open now to your touch, to your word, to your leading.
Help us to be ones who are focused on the good things that you do rather than the bad things that the evil one does. Help us to be ones who help instead of stand by at the side and criticize - to be ones who love instead of hate - who trust instead of fear - who plant rather than pluck up what has been planted.
We ask your blessings on all who are in need this day, named and unnamed. Your blessings on those places so familiar to us, troubled by war and injustice, terrorism and greed, and on all the hidden places where suffering goes unnoticed and life seems to have no value or purpose.
O God, all the seed was good once and we confess we are not in a position to judge where time will lead us all. Grant us your wisdom as we struggle to be your church, and your patience that we might be more compassionate with ourselves and others, in the name of the one who is our brother, our friend, and our Lord, both now and forevermore. Amen