Sermon

There is a funny dynamic that I think is often at work between us and our problems. We don’t like problems. We don’t want them. We think of them as something out of the ordinary. And yet, when they arise they seem to totally consume us and become for us the only real thing of significance.

I was once asked to co-officiate a wedding. That’s when you perform a wedding alongside another priest. As you may know, flash photography is prohibited during a wedding because a marriage ceremony is a solemn act. And so as is custom, we explained this to the wedding party before the service.

Well, the first part of the service went fine. But then when my colleague began leading the bride and the groom through their vows, it happened. Out from the sacristy came this photographer. It was like he was at a ball game. He had the biggest lens I’d ever seen. He came within two feet of the couple and began clicking away.

Now, to be sure, this was definitely annoying. But it didn’t seem to bother the bride or the groom, in fact they probably arranged for it. So, I simply thought to myself, “Oh well, what can you do. Just go with it.” But not so with the other priest … he lost it!

After trying to get out a couple of words, it was clear he couldn’t get past it. And so stepping between the bride and the groom — I’m not exaggerating here, this is probably the worst thing I’ve ever seen in church — he grabbed the photographer and began screaming at him. “You’re ruining everything! You’re ruining it! You’re ruining it!”

Now you want to talk about pulling up the wheat with the weeds. I mean, come on! But that’s what happened. And it happened because he placed his focus on the problem instead of staying true to what he was called to do — uplifting and celebrating the love that God had offered two people. And so in the end he was right, everything WAS ruined.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us a parable about a field. He says there is a field full of seed. But in sprouting, they bring forth both weeds and wheat. Now when the workers of the farm look out on the mixed crop they get frustrated. For all they can see is a problem to be dealt with. “These weeds shouldn’t be here!” And so wanting to be faithful to their job as they understand it, they go to their master and ask him if they can pull up the weeds and fix the problem. It seems straightforward – who wouldn’t rid their garden of weeds?

Yet, what follows is strange — and herein lays the wonder of the parable. Instead of telling them to go out and clean up the field, the Master tells them to let the weeds be. Yeah, even though there are weeds everywhere, he tells them to let them be. This is the first thing Christ wants us to hear. Let the weeds be. Whatever your problems are, whatever is on your mind right now as you’re here in church, let it be. Let it be!

Now Christ doesn’t offer this up to us because he doesn’t care, or because he wants us to be reckless, or because our problems don’t matter. Rather he encourages us to let them be so that like the Master we can be free to see something else — the wonder wheat. Beyond the problem of the weeds is the wonder of the wheat. For although the weeds appear menacing, a problem staring them in the face like the flash of a bulb at a wedding, the truth is the weeds do not affect the wheat. They’re there, but they re not preventing the wheat from growing.

You see at the heart of this parable, the wisdom of it, if you will, is that the wheat grows. The parable doesn’t even mention how. There’s nothing about the slaves or the master having done anything, the wheat just grow. God’s work, in other words, happens. The goodness of our lives happens. And it happens amidst, even despite the problems of the world.[1]

Christ calls us today to focus on the wheat in our lives, the love, the grace, the gifts we have been given, to place our energy there, to find our meaning there, to make those things the real things of significance.

Let me say it another way. In my office I have what I’d call a Buddhist depiction of this parable. There’s a man riding a bull while playing a flute. The man and his music represent peace and happiness, all the things we want. The bull represents the darker, weedier things, things that are problematic, things that trip us up, pose a barrier to our happiness.

Yet peace and happiness comes, the picture depicts, not through struggling against the bull, but by riding it, going with it, living along with it. Acknowledging it, recognizing it for what it is, and then moving on. By focusing on the good things in life, what we enjoy, what we feel called to do, happiness will come and the bull, although still there, will become, the image suggests, nothing more then aspect of the journey.

We are called today to ride the bull, or as Christ would say to shift our attention away from the weeds so as to focus on the wheat. We are called not to tangle with weeds, but to embrace the goodness of the wheat.

In closing, in order to bring this closer to you, let me give you an image to think about. The other day I was talking with Christie Laborda, the vicar of Iglesia El Buen Pastor, the Hispanic Episcopal mission here in Durham, and she told me an amazing story.

She said that there was a 15-year-old girl in her congregation that had recently been coming to her church. Christy knew she was part of a gang. At first she remained on the fringe, and then slowly and slowly she began getting more involved. Recently she came to Christy and said that she had quit her gang. Even more than that, she said she was working to get other kids out as well.

I was amazed by this and I began to wonder if Christy has some special pastoral skill. I asked Christy what she did. Did she speak to her about the problems of her lifestyle? Did she take on issues of violence? Did she tell the girl how she was hurting her parents and God? Christ, what did you do?

In answering, she simply said, “Jonah, I didn’t do anything. It just happened. I was just leading church. The people she got to know here were just being church. We sang. We prayed. We shared communion. That’s it. We were just church.”

That’s what it means to embrace the wheat. That’s what it means to live for the good. That’s the real power of God. For in that goodness, the goodness of that community gathered together, I believe that girl encountered something positive and affirming and that is what led her from darkness to light, from weeds to wheat.

[1] Capon, Robert Farrar, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids MI: 2002, page 85.

Sermon

St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Durham, NC

July 20, 2008 - Proper 11 (A)

The Rev. M. Jonah Kendall