Matthew 13:24-30

[Jesus] 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.’ ”

Parables leave much to be desired. They are often unclear, leaving us with more doubt than certainty on their meaning. They are evocative, yet simple, using common elements from everyday life. Most parables don’t come with interpretations, which is why I didn’t read the one assigned with this text. Interpretations were often added later, much like the one given for our parable today and they can veer from the parable itself, allegorizing or assigning emphasis in a way that it wasn’t meant to. And so if we take the parable just as it is, we wonder “what is it about”?

Perhaps it's about evil. Even without the interpretation, its not a stretch for someone to read the weeds as bad things and the enemy as the devil. Yet, if its about evil, we don’t really get answers to the questions we might have. Surely it's not as simple as God wasn’t paying attention and the devil saw an opportunity. And nowhere in the parable are we told why evil is still a present force. If anything the parable simply confirms our experience in the world, that evil does in fact exist. We see it, we’ve experienced it, and if we’re honest we’ve likely participated in it, knowingly or unknowingly.

So if the parable isn’t about evil, what else then?

Perhaps it’s about who gets into heaven. Are we wheat or are we weeds? That’s what we really want to know after all: am I going to the barn or the burn pile? But this raises even more questions than the problem of evil. Is it eternally decided that you are a grain of wheat or a weed? How can you know? If you are a weed, is there any way to become wheat or vice versa? Science and gardeners would say no. You can’t plant an onion and get a tomato. So how could that ever be fair? If that's what the parable is about, God seems to be nothing more than an unjust gardener.

Yet, I don’t think that’s what this parable is about either..

More than anything, the parable is about ambiguity, decisions, and hope. The sower had a choice: pull the weeds and risk the wheat, or wait and live with the weeds growing right there beside the wheat. We too live in a world full of good and bad, wheat and weeds. And every month, every week, every day we are faced with decisions where the answers or the right choice isn’t so clear.

The parable exemplifies this more than we English readers realize. The word for “weeds” here does not apply to just any old weed, but rather something more specific. In Greek, the word is zizanion which is a type of weed we call darnel. Darnel looks just like wheat.

Take a look at this picture. Can you tell which is wheat and which is darnel?... When both crops are unripe and green, you can hardly tell the difference between them. When they are ripe, the seed of the darnel becomes darker than the wheat. If one consumes a lot of darnel, it is poisonous, causing awful damage to one’s insides, sometimes resulting in death. It can be a deadly error, mistaking weeds for wheat and yet it can be so hard to tell them apart.

The same is true in our own lives no? It can be so hard to tell the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, the just choice vs the unjust. Yet, we still have to make decisions:

Do I take this new job thats full of potential and uncertainty or do I stay in the life sucking, yet stable job that I’m in now?

Do I help my addict family member and if so how? Money? A place to stay? And yet will my family be safe?

Do I continue treatment that's worse than the disease or do I cut my life short?

Do I go to the school that’s the best or the most affordable?

Do I approach that family member, that friend about what they said or did or do I keep the peace?

Some decisions are harder than others no doubt. And often it’ll take time to know if we made the right choice, if we get to know that at all in this lifetime. What we do know is that we won’t always make the right decisions. As a congregation, in your families, and for yourself, we haven’t and we won’t always get it right. In thinking we are doing something good, we will pull wheat instead of weeds. And just when we think our crop is nothing but darnel, the harvest turns out to be the most beautiful wheat.

The decisions we face are difficult. The promise in this parable isn’t that because of our faith we will always make the right decision; Nor is the promise that our decisions are easier for us than for anyone else. And that's okay… because the truth is we aren't saved by our decisions, but by the grace of Jesus. The promise, then, of this parable is that regardless of our decisions, right and wrong, somehow God will sort it all out in the end.

That’s the hope by which we are saved, as Saint Paul says, meaning we need not fret or worry about every decision we get right or wrong. Instead, we are freed by grace: to live in the moment, to make our reverent best guess, and to trust that the only absolute in this life is the absolution we receive every time we confess when we got it wrong, just like we did today.

I am reminded of one of my favorite poems, one by Boris Novak aptly titled Decisions. He writes,

“Between two words

choose the quieter one.

Between word and silence

choose listening.

Between two books

choose the dustier one.

Between the earth and the sky

choose a bird.

Between two animals

choose the one who needs you more.

Between two children

choose both.

Between the lesser and the bigger evil

choose neither.

Between hope and despair

choose hope:

it will be harder to bear.”

Regardless of what decisions are before you or the ones you’ve already made, do not despair.

Choose hope, trusting not in your own decisions, but in the grace of Jesus, and believing that God will sort it all out in the end, judging not with fairness, but with mercy and love. Amen.

Matthew 9:35-10:8

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not take a road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.

No city was too big, no village too small, no sickness too strong. Jesus makes it look and sound all so easy. It makes me wonder, did he ever get tired? When he laid down at night, did his feet hurt and blister from all the walking? Was his throat hoarse from all the teaching and talking? So far in Matthew Jesus has been hard at work: healing, teaching, setting people free from demons, but we don’t get to hear details about what he was thinking or feeling. Afterall, it is kinda hard to get that when someone else is telling the story.

Yet, today we get a little insight! From town to town and city to city, a crowd of people followed Jesus, waiting to hear the teachings, to see the healings, hoping they themselves might be on the receiving end. And as Jesus went to more towns, did more miracles, taught in more synagogues, the crowd grew larger and larger.

Jesus turned, saw the crowd and we’re told: “he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless”. That word compassion literally means “to be moved in one’s bowels”, to be stirred up in one’s insides. Jesus saw their hurt, he likely smelled the stench of their struggle, heard the desperation in their cries. The sight, the sound, the scent; it was gut wrenching for Jesus. He felt the pressure to do something about it all and so he instructed his disciples to pray…”the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. So ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers”.

It’s nothing new to hear Jesus give instructions on how to pray or what to say, but what I love about this prayer is that immediately Jesus gathered his disciples to send them out into the harvest.

Jesus prays and then answers his own prayer. As Pope Francis says, “Pray for the hungry. And then you go feed them. That’s how prayer works.” And that is exactly what Jesus did. Once gathered, Jesus equipped the disciples with authority and instructed them to do all the things they have seen him do: proclaim the good news, cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons; all works of healing and setting free.

We often say that the church began at Pentecost, but there is a pretty strong case to be made that when Jesus calls, equips, and sends out these disciples to continue his ministry, that’s when the church began.

It is curious though that the disciples are not permitted to go to Gentile or Samaritan areas. Are they not worth healing or setting free? No, quite the opposite in fact. The last words Jesus says in Matthew are “go therefore, making disciples of all nations”, expanding and overriding the limitations he set here. It’s as if Jesus is saying “start with where and with whom you know best. Soon your call will be to the ends of the earth, but not yet.” And so with clear instructions and well equipped, the disciples set out to heal and to set free.

This story confronts us with many questions: What sights and sounds and sensations fill you with compassion? Who are the harassed and helpless of today? Would you agree with Jesus that still today the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few?

Perhaps most of all, this story made me ask the question, if Jesus were to summon us today, call us by name, gather us into one place, and then send us out: what would be our mission?

What authority have we been given? At first, I wanted to say that it would have to be a mission different from that of the disciples, I mean we aren’t really tasked with casting out unclean spirits or curing every disease and every sickness. We leave the latter up to nurses and doctors and as for “unclean spirits”, that sounds a bit like religious fanaticism or crazy talk.

Yet, are there not unclean spirits that harass and oppress in the world still today? Is not racism or poverty or homophobia still at work, hurting our neighbors? Absolutely they are. I just read a report on the rise of violent and hateful acts toward LGBTQ people and communities including armed protest, online harassment, and bomb threats. Poverty in Central Indiana has been on the rise since 1970, especially in black and brown neighborhoods. And while this is anecdotal, our phones have been ringing off the hook with people asking for groceries or gas cards, many for the first time.

As for racism, there is too much that could be said. Last week, I attended the Interrupting Racism Workshop that Pastor Mark set up as a part of his sabbatical. 10 P.I.M will be going over the course of the summer. It was an intense two days that showed the historical and current damage and divisions caused by racism. In Francia’s class on “How the Word is Passed”, we’ve begun learning just how whitewashed our history has been, revealing that the unclean spirit of racism still dwells in our societal systems, our cities, and even ourselves.

For that reason, I largely agree with Washington Gladden who said the most important mission of the church to society is “the reconciliation of races. [what] must be done is to take this chaotic mass of dissimilar, discordant, suspicious, antipathetic racial elements and blend them into unity. The first Christians had a task of this nature on their hands; bring[ing] together in one fellowship Jews and Gentiles. But that was a pastime compared with the herculean labor entrusted to us,--the bringing together of whites and blacks. It is the task of the nation; but the church of Jesus Christ is charged with the business of furnishing the sentiments and ideas by which it may be accomplished.”

Washington Gladden is known as the father of the social gospel movement and the author of the hymn we sing next. He wrote that quote in 1908, more than 100 years ago, and yet here we are.

We have been doing work around racism for a while now. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed or to feel like we’ve talked about it enough. After all, what’s the point? If New Pal is 97-98% white, then the chance or likelihood of Cross of Grace being a racially diverse place is rather low. This is true. But New Pal and Hancock County are growing. Census data says this area has grown 20% in the last 10 years, and all the construction and development I pass on my way here each day tells me that this trend will only increase.

So as this area grows and does diversify, hopefully we will be a place well equipped to welcome and support our black and brown neighbors. Yet I wonder if even more than that, what if the point of all this talk on racism, our proximity to it, learning the history, reading the books, attending the workshops etc, is not to gather in all folks of color into our fold, but rather to be sent out as missionaries, as apostles of Jesus to cast out the unclean spirit of racism in the places we know best: ourselves, our homes, our families, our work, our neighborhoods, our schools, our communities, our town.

When we do that, we are proclaiming the good news that God’s kingdom of justice and mercy has come near. Such a mission is difficult no doubt. You may feel like you don’t know where to begin or what to say or do. Which means, one of the missions of this place is to equip one another for this work.

That’s why we do the workshops, book studies, adult forums, and occasionally even sermons. Because Christ has chosen us as his co-workers: gathered, equipped, and sent to cast out unclean spirits, wherever they are at work, but especially in the places and among the people we know best.

Yet as Jesus said, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. So ask the Lord to send out laborers, and then go cast out those unclean spirits. Amen