Matthew 13:24-30,36-43The Parable of Weeds among the WheatHe 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.”’Jesus Explains the Parable of the WeedsThen 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!I wonder how many of you are fans of Charlie Brown and the comic strip cartoon Peanuts? Sadly, its creator Charles Schulz died in February 2000. Lucy is one of the main characters – a little girl that likes to play the psychiatrist from a lemonade stand. Charlie Brown and his friends go there to be heard, but only get useless and clichéd responses in return for the 5¢ they pay. There is a little bit of Lucy in all of us: when someone speaks to us, sometimes we aren’t really listening; we are already thinking of the answer we will so generously give, because we want quick solutions to problems. It is in our nature to rush in our judgments and conclusions. We all have a need to be listened to, but we also need the time to listen to ourselves and to give our ears to hear God. Well, maybe you have found that our period of lock down has given you more time and space to think, to listen, to articulate your feelings, to hear and reflect, and to decide. The Gospel of Matthew was written at the time of the early church community, a community full of contrasts and conflicts, where some thought of themselves as better than others and had difficulty having fellowship with those who were judged to be false and impious. In our reading today, Jesus’ parable seems to say that this is not God’s way of being. God acts with patience and meekness and often invisibly. He does not love hasty judgments; He loves to take His time and He invites us to be patient.The parable of the weeds among the wheat would have made a lot more sense to Jesus’ original audience. When one farmer wanted to sabotage another, it wasn’t unheard of for them to sow bearded darnel into their wheat. This weed name is translated from the Hebrew word zunim or the Greek word zizanion and is also known as tares, or even bastard wheat. Bearded darnel is a noxious weed that initially mimics the characteristics of wheat. Before they mature, the two plants are almost identical, but as they ripen, the differences become apparent. When the darnel is fully grown it has long upright ears and its grain is black and poisonous. The true wheat has shorter ears and a bowed head. Jesus has sown the wheat seed of the children of the Kingdom of God into the good soil. The enemy has planted the weeds, representing evil, amongst those who belong to God. It is never easy to understand how and why God does not intervene to remove the weeds that make the life of the wheat so difficult. Yet God, in His wisdom lets them grow together. As we look at what disturbs us in our world, the greed, corruption, injustice, disease, the damage to the environment, all that disturbs us in our personal lives, we need to ask God for the wisdom and courage to deal with them as He does. How do I deal with imperfection in myself and with others? Can I live with limitations in myself and others?Jesus makes it clear that any attempt to root out the weeds will only do more damage to the crop. And yet, Christians from every age have been tempted to be over zealous weeders, keen to purify the community by rooting out the bad seed. However, we are not the ones to make the judgment call; we are being proud and arrogant if we think we know for certain the difference between the wheat and the weeds. All too often, damage has been done to the church when individuals, congregations or denominations have judged others either within or outside of the church. This can seriously damage the church and its mission. On a personal level, we may think that perfection is acquired by becoming more aware of our faults and working to root these out. But Jesus accepted us in our sinful state and he knows our limitations. We don’t need to be fixated about our failings, rather we should appreciate the fullness of life that Jesus has already given us. Stay close with Jesus and let Him teach you how to grow, even whilst surrounded by the weeds. He sees that you are a beautiful wheat plant and he will not jeopardise your growth. He delights when He sees us bearing fruit for the Kingdom. The advance of the Kingdom of God will take place through a process of slow growth. Be kind to yourself and trust in the Lord of Creation, the most experienced of cultivators, that He has the matter well in hand.We do get frustrated and impatient by the presence of evil in our midst. It poses one of our biggest questions in life. The idea that good and bad might coexist gives trouble to the tidy mind, and so Jesus calls us to humility, patience and tolerance as we allow God to work in our lives. In our parable Jesus tells us that the struggle between good and evil is to the death, but we can rest assured that God will have the last word. At the end of the age, it’s the job of the harvester to judge who is or who isn’t a member of God’s Kingdom.In conclusion, let us use these strange times we live in to take the slow food approach to our growth as wheat plants. Let us take time to listen, to hear and to reflect, individually and as a community of believers. Don’t be anxious about the poisonous potential of the weeds around you and leave it to God to judge others. God is patiently waiting for His Kingdom to grow and come to maturity. When all people have to stand before our Lord to give account of their lives, some will stand big and proud, with their heads up and say ‘I did great’, but the genuine believers will bow their heads in grateful thanks to Jesus for the sacrifice he made for their sins, knowing that they were on earth to feed the world in humble service to Him. Amen
Thoughts for Today From the real world, sublime and challenging Isolation, a different kind of rain forest and… Valparaiso’s spinning drummers…Chacabuco is one of those names that really exercises the mouth. It is a remote place, as if in the middle of nowhere, with a growing port which is 30 years young. The Sunday sun was shining, the sea glowing and in the background the snow-covered Andes. The town was named after the ship that was part of the independence sea battle (1817) of Chile. It is usually warm and wet with 3000mm of rain annually, and part of the world of pumas and condors, and in this port, salmon fishing.Heading our way by coach to Parco Aiken Del Sur, a private conservation forest, we were looking forward to the morning. Aiken means ‘Refuge’ and embraces a rain-forest which is so dense the trees have very narrow trunks because of the lack of light. On the way there were cattle in the road,and the entrance to our trek was dominated by huge Gunnera plants (called Nanka), and very tall wild Fuschia trees amongst white Arrayan white flowers. The darkness of the forest led us through to the great light of a 72 feet high waterfall and the rainbow of the picture. An exotic beetle on the way back was showing off just for us - a Chilean Stag Beetle.Just a short ride away was a large lake and Quincho House - like a tall Garden Room, with a central open fire where we had the obligatory refreshments. We walked down to the lake overlooking the foothills where numerous swifts gave us their constant air display.In the late afternoon back on board Balmoral we celebrated Holy Communion surrounded by beauty, the salt of the sea and the light breaking through the complexity of the Patagonian Forest.A couple of days at sea afforded the opportunity for passengers to reflect on the journey so far. A listening ear for support was given through sadness at home, or uncertainties foreseen in the future. Light in darkness has many guises and sometimes takes time. A voyage of this length gave that time to open up to the future in all kinds of circumstances.The 12th of February saw us arriving in the port of Valparaiso,‘the jewel of the South Pacific’. We coincided with their midsummer 23C and on average 27C all year round. Valparaiso took the name of the sea battle between the British and the American navy in 1812. It has a population of over 300,000 and is famous for its street art, extraordinary architecture, and very steep funicular lifts to the heights of their 43 hills. It was the home of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He is celebrated as ‘the poet’ of the Americas. His real name was Ricardo Basoalto and we visited his house Le Sebastiana up on the heights overlooking the port. It is reached by one of the 6 Funiculars. Between 1883-1915 there were 15 of them in operation. At the time we could not understand the heightened security with backpacks locked away and the banning of any photos inside the house. We subsequently learned Neruda is still not without controversy. A committed atheist and lifelong Communist he was well travelled. His home is full of light displaying the very practical and eclectic furniture and art from around the world. He brought the idea of murals for the city from Mexico. As well as being a poet he also served the Diplomatic Service of Chile in 1938 in Paris and was Consul General in Mexico 1940-1943. Having supported President Allende he was appointed as Ambassador to Paris from 1970-1972. Neruda died just twelve days after the military coup of Pinochet in1973.After all the culture we were treated to Empanada (Chilean for Cornish Pastie) and Pisco Sour on Mount Pleasant as the whirling drummers of Valparaiso serenaded us. Our descent was the steep and rudimentary funicular revealing the murals of Valparaiso. These tell the stories of earthquakes in 1906, and the recent fire in the city in 2014 when 16 people died and 2,800 houses were destroyed. They now face the challenges of Covid 19.This is a resilient city, despite the recent troubles, and the exuberance of the place was never far away…we pray for light out of darkness in these troubled places.We travel on to Arica, ‘the driest inhabited place on earth’ and our last port in Chile….Blessings from Edward and Jane
Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23IllustrationListen! Jesus begins the parable of the sower by asking the crowd to listen. And again at the end, he tells them to listen. ‘Let anyone with ears listen.’ When I was a teacher it felt like I spent a lot of my time asking children to listen. Listen to me. Listen to each other. They didn’t always find it easy. In fact, the first time I preached a sermon I found it really disconcerting because everyone was looking at me and listening at the same time. No one was whispering, no one was playing with their shoe laces, no one was poking the person next to them. I found it really unnerving! Now I’m not going to flatter myself by assuming that they were all listening intently, hanging on my every word. Because adults acquire a skill that many children don’t have, the ability to look like they are listening when they are not. We’ve all done it, you might be doing it now. Our minds wander and we are distracted by what we might have for dinner, what’s on telly tonight or that job we must remember to do. Gospel TeachingIt’s hard to listen carefully as this parable shows. The weeds, the rocks and the thorns get in the way. Unusually Jesus interprets the meaning of this parable. The seed is the word of the kingdom and it only flourishes when it falls on the good soil. But it is easy to be led astray, to get distracted, to lose focus on the word of God. We often understand this parable as a simple morality tale. The moral is we should be like the good soil. We should listen carefully and be receptive to God’s word at all times. But Jesus doesn’t actually tell us to be the good soil. He lays out the options and leaves it up to us to decide. Crucially there is a gap in between the telling of the parable and the interpretation of it, eight verses which do not appear in our reading today. In these verses the disciples ask Jesus why he speaks in parables. His answer is not straight forward; He says ‘The reason I speak to them in parables is that seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’ There is a difference between listening and understanding as Jesus makes clear. He speaks in parables because he want people to listen, to understand and to think things through for themselves. By using parables Jesus challenges the hearer to respond to the message of the kingdom and this response is a free one. Those who listen are free to reject the message or to respond with genuine hearing, understanding and repentance. There is the possibility of a rich harvest.It’s hard to listen carefully all the time. Realistically we are all, at different times, all four different types of soil. We all have rocks and thorns and weeds that get in the way. But I think there is more to this parable than a simple moral. It has something to tell us about the nature of God and about the nature of God’s kingdom. What does it tell us about the nature of God?If we consider for a moment the sower. He’s not a great farmer is he? Surely you would be careful to scatter the seed only on the good soil and not waste it on the bad? I’m imagining a beautifully ploughed field where it is easy to only scatter seed on the good soil. But maybe this isn’t possible without a tractor. Maybe the field is a bit rocky and thorny in places. Or maybe the sower is careless, or foolish. But this is what God is like. God’s scatters his word, his love for us, foolishly, recklessly over all types of soil, over all of his creation. For God sees the good soil in all his imperfect, perfect creation. He removes our rocks and thorns and weeds and nurtures the seed within us. This parable speaks of God’s love for all creation, of his desire to see us flourish and of our potential to bear fruit.What does it tell us about the nature of God’s Kingdom?What then of the kingdom? The parable of the sower is followed in Matthew but other parables about the kingdom of God. It is important that the sower is sowing a whole field of crops not one tree or one plant. We are all growing together. If we are all, at times, different types of soil but all with the potential to flourish then this parable calls us to spread God’s word and to seek the coming of the kingdom together, as a community. How can we do this? I suggest we follow Jesus’ example and use stories, not parables but our own personal stories of lives lived with God. ApplicationWhen I left college they told us that the first thing we should do in our new parishes was to carry out a ‘contextual analysis’. This sounds a bit clinical, like it might involve petri dishes and microscopes but all they meant was to get to know the place. And the best way to do this is to listen to the stories. Stories are one of the most effective ways we have to convey ideas, thoughts and emotions. It’s why on the news they go behind the headline, behind the facts to find a person whose story tells the event in a more eloquent and memorable way. It’s why Jesus used parables to get his message across, to elicit a response from his hearers. The stories we tell about ourselves and others are key to our understanding. In sharing our own stories of faith we can bear witness to the word of God at work in our lives. In listening to the stories of others we can hear how God is at work in their lives. What’s your story? How would you speak of God working in your life?God speaks to all of us in individual and unique ways but it is when we share our stories, our experiences that as a community we can together begin to make sense of them. If you speak to people after a sermon or a film or a TV show different people will be struck by different parts and will remember different things. To deepen our understanding we need to be listening collectively to what God is saying. It’s not alway easy to listen, we are not always the good soil but if we open our hearts to God he will work in us to remove our thorns and rocks and weeds, such is his love for his creation. The seed that is the word of the Lord is not planted individually. It is scattered generously over everyone. In listening together and in listening to others we can hear what God is saying to us all. What is God saying to you? What is God saying to us in these unusual times? By listening and discerning together we can speak of where God is working in the world, we can respond to God’s word and we can seek the coming of the kingdom where all will bear fruit and flourish.Amen.
4th Sunday after Trinity, 5th July 2020“…..and learn from me…”Illustration“…..and learn from me…” words that have stuck in my mind over these past few days and caused me to think of teachers and teaching.Teaching has taken a lot of criticism over the years, differing teaching methods seem to be blamed for all sorts of things, from:• failing / falling literacy rates, • respect levels in society, • the increase of verbal and physical violence, • and, any other ill will that is prevalent.Which is when you think about it quite depressing, a while ago a group of researchers set about trying to alleviate this idea and asking a number of famous people for the names of any teacher that had inspired them.The result was astonishing, each and every famous person had at least one or two names of teachers who had influenced their lives and changed their futures. Sometimes it was their academic gifts, but more likely it was the teachers ability to inspire their pupils, to give them a special something which spurred them on to achieve their very best, even to reach heights previously unimagined. Think for a moment, who were your inspirational teachers?Gospel teachingNo one can overestimate the influences of a good teacher. Even if we cannot remember a thing they actually taught us, good teachers will be remembered with fondness long after their words have been forgotten. That is because people are more important than words. Qualities like kindness and generosity are always more enduring than principles or rules, and integrity is more infectious than dogma.In todays Gospel, Jesus offers himself as a teacher: “Learn from me”, he says. At this point in his ministry Jesus has had to face up to being rejected by the religious hierarchy and the ‘wise’ people of his time. His message found no place in their hearts, becoming experts in the law had prevented them from recognising the coming of God’s Messiah, the coming of God’s Kingdom. Instead, Jesus found a ready audience among the people considered social outcasts. The tax collectors and sinners, those unable to keep the law in all its rigour. They all welcomed Jesus’ message and the hope it brought.Unfortunately, or perhaps not? the so called experts were so preoccupied with keeping the externals of the law they had lost sight of its purpose, to lead people to God. Indeed as I have said on many occasions these experts of the law had created a further 613 laws so that people could keep the 10 commandments more easily. Does this sound familiar?No wonder Jesus says “Come to me, all you that are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.”“Come to me.” - Come to me and follow me, rather than rules and regulations devised by religious, political leaders.Jesus offered a different “yoke,” a simpler one. We don’t have to worry about hundreds of laws, or keeping the minutiae of rules and regulations. Jesus offers himself as a model to follow. He alone is the way to God. Follow him and we will find God. Like a good teacher, the lasting impression he /she makes reside in who they are, more than what they say.Jesus asks us to be like him, to be gentle and to acknowledge our need for God. Can you do that? - in these moments; offer yourselves to God - place your life into his hands, give him the freedom to come into it and shape it and allow his Holy Spirit to breathe within you.You know, we read time and time again in the gospel stories and even in more contemporary stories, that when someone asks God into their space, into their lives, then that is the defining moment; like the tax collectors and sinners of old when we admit our dependence on God, then we are able to receive his mercy and grace.And like them we experience God’s love and mercy, not just mindless obedience, but by meeting a person: Jesus, God’s own Son, face to face.Application Jesus says his burden is light. We can be burdened with all sorts of things; laws, rules, guidance, even from the best of friends who often say let me have “a kind word in your shell like!” Today and every day I am confident that Jesus wants you to experience his yoke, that is easy and is full of gentleness and humility. Jesus yoke is ‘well fitting’, tailor made to suit you. Because the task is simple - be yourself!Be the person God wants you to be, let Jesus be your teacher, be gentle, with yourself and others. Be humble, acknowledge your need for God, let him into your story, your life, allow him time and space to change you from within, follow the prompting of His Spirit within you, allow him to give you rest.Amen.
