10th Sunday after Pentecost ~ July 20, 2008

Dear brothers and sister in Christ. Jesus parables have a way of taking an ordinary topic and turn it upside down. Last week we heard the parable of the sower - an ordinary idea of planting seed - turned upside when we see seed being scattered everywhere and Jesus does not correct that part put talks about the end result. Today is the same with the wheat and the weeds. Did we hear it right? The master said "don't pick the weeds"?

Weeds, don't we just hate them? We spend a lot of time and money to get rid of weeds. We rid our lawns of weeds, we pick them out of our flowers and we do almost anything to keep them out of our gardens. Speaking of gardens, our family finally has one this year - only 8 years since we moved here! But we have one and now we spend a lot of time trying to keep the weeds out and the good plants growing. And that makes sense to us - to have a good garden you need to weed. If you let the weeds grow won't they just choke out the good plants, the wheat?

And we apply this principle to our lives outside of "plants". Don't we want to remove the weeds of our life? We pick carefully who we associate with, what we wear, read, watch, listen too and even where we will live. We carefully cultivate a life that has few weeds. Or at least we make a good attempt to do this even if the weeds still come into our lives. And this makes sense - remove the weeds of life so that the good things are not choked out.

So what does Jesus mean by this parable - not to pull the weeds? Jesus is taking us further that just the "surface" things of life. Yes we should be careful of what we watch, eat, live, conduct our lives. We do live with the 10 Commandments as a guide to our lives. But the deeper meaning here is while we can weed our own gardens, our own lives - we must be careful about weeding other's lives, or even what we consider weeds outside of ourselves. When it comes to looking into the hearts of men and women, only God can do that.

Another reality - only God can truly remove evil from the world. While we may make attempts at removing evil and the bad things in our lives, true removal can only be accomplished by God. Isn't that what Jesus was saying when He explained the parable to His disciples? When the end comes it will be the master (God) who will separate the good from the evil, the weeds from the wheat. That is God's job not ours. Only God can judge the hearts of men.

But don't we as a church sometimes play judge in the world? Don't we try to tell the world where all the evil is and try ourselves to remove it? And if we can't remove it don't we tend to remove ourselves from the evil of the world. And on one level this is good as long as we are looking to help our own spiritual lives. But when we place ourselves in the role of Master and not servant we can pull up the wheat with the weeds.

Here is an illustration from my own life that might make this a little more clear. We have a neighbor that likes to prune trees, trim bushes and even plant things. I believe she may be knowledgeable in these things. She knows when a tree need to be trimmed or a bush pruned and what plant will work where. And she goes around the neighborhood pruning, trimming and planting. The problem is she doesn't ask first. She just goes about her business expecting that what she is doing the right thing and will be welcomed. The problem is that it isn't welcomed! She is not well liked in our neighborhood and has the reputation as someone who interferes.

We can do that as Christians when we take on God's role and act as judges of who is wheat and weeds. I believe there is a real challenge for us here today in these words. We need to stay in the weeds. And that is hard. When I look at my garden and see weeds I want to remove them. When I look at the world I want to either remove all the weeds or at least be in a place with very little weeds. But I truly need to recognize that when it comes to people's lives I can't see into there hearts. What may appear to be a weed may be wheat. God may be working in someone’s life to being about wheat from the weeds. And in my rush to remove weeds I may remove the wheat too.

The church has often been viewed as isolationist and separate from the world. We have given this image as we have acted like our neighbor - pruning and trimming where we have no business doing what is God's work. God will weed, we as the wheat are called to share of our fruit - the gift of God's love and grace and mercy. We need to stay in the weeds even when we don't want to be there. And we need to be patient. 50 years ago evangelism on one level was easy since most people had at least a simple knowledge of the Bible. We could speak of things in Scripture and most people understood. And in the process of sharing God's Word most people that came into the church took maybe a year to come to a place of membership and knowledge of Jesus as the only way, truth and life. But now we live in an age where people have less and less knowledge of basic Bible stories. It has been said that it may take 5 to 7 years now to bring an unbeliever to the point of accepting Jesus as the only way, truth and life for salvation. That takes patients and it will take us spending more time in the weeds of life. The good news is that if we take the time, the many years of reaching out to unbelievers, and sharing over and over again the foundation of our faith, people become strong members of a church. The time pays off - we just need to be patient and be in it for the long haul. We have to spend a lot of time with unbelievers - we have to stay in the weeds.

This also means we need to be inviting more and more unbelievers here for worship. While it is true that to get the most out of worship we need to be a believer in Jesus, we still need to be exposing unbeliever to God's Word on a regular basis. We need to be bringing unbelievers here. What we may consider weeds God sees as potential wheat. Let us not judge who is wheat or weed but share of God's love in tangible, long-haul, loving ministries.

I also think there is another reality we need to take into consideration - God is already at work in the world, weeding His garden. Too often we view the church as a place where God dwells and the world as a "God-less" place. But in reality God is involved in the whole world. When we think of missions or evangelism we think we are the ones bringing God to the people, when in reality being in missions means God is out in the world pull us to where He wants us. If we open our eyes to God's work of mission we will see God not standing behind us but in front of us, not pushing us out, but pulling us to what He is doing.

Gardening can be a hard but rewarding work. To see the good fruit come forth is so much fun. But often in gardening or farming we realize that even with all the hard work we do - there are many things outside of our control. That can drive us crazy, or we can let it go and realize the reality of the situation. The same is true in our spiritual lives and the spiritual lives of others. We can go crazy trying to pull all the weed, and probably damage the wheat, or we can let go of the weeding and let God work in people's lives as we scatter the seed - everywhere (like the crazy farmer in the last parable) and see the fruit God will produce in others. Wheat and weeds - we are called to live in the weeds, proclaim Jesus and watch God transform weeds into wheat for the sake of His kingdom.

Amen.