Loving God, you often use the ordinary and the tiny in order to do great things. Empower us by your Spirit this day, that your kingdom and your love might be made known through us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

            The thing about parables is that each person will hear them slightly differently based on their background and their experience and their assumptions about how things work.  Another thing – at least with the parables that Jesus tells – is that there is usually something in the story that would have been shocking to those who heard it.

         In the case of the parable of the weeds among the wheat, any of us who have ever had a garden are able to pick up on the strange things that are in this story.  For one thing, do weeds usually show up because somebody has come at night and planted them?... Not that we know of, right?  So the presence of an enemy who comes and plants weeds in your field is a little bit strange.

         The other thing that is fairly obvious to those who grow things outside is that just leaving the weeds there until the harvest time isn’t a particularly good idea.  If you’re trying to grow a field of wheat and you just let the weeds grow along with it, what is going to happen?... [The weeds will take over; the yield will be smaller]  Any self-respecting farmer would get rid of the weeds in order to have a better harvest. And so, anybody listening to this parable would be asking, “What is Jesus trying to say?”

         However, one of the nuances that we miss as modern listeners is the assumptions that the Jewish people might have been making as they heard this parable.  They would have assumed that both the field and the wheat referred to Israel, and they also would have assumed that the weeds were Gentiles. Some of them might have even believed Jesus to be the enemy.  Thus, the explanation that Jesus later gives to his disciples would have been quite shocking to them.  It is not Jews and Gentiles who are in the parable, but children of God and children of the evil one.

         Another thing that we might not grasp as modern listeners is that there is a weed called darnel that is native to Palestine and that looks exactly like wheat until the head appears. Thus, if you were pulling weeds, there would definitely be a danger of pulling out some of the wheat along with them. The fact that they are left to grow together in the parable reminds us of the God who does not want even one of these little ones to be lost, but all to come to repentance.

         This parable also lifts up for us how hard it is for us to tell who has Jesus in their heart and who has evil intentions in their heart.  Both can appear exactly the same, and it is not until we see their fruit that we can tell who belongs to God and who doesn’t.

         When I was in St. Albert, a young man showed up at the church who played the guitar and knew lots of Christian songs.  He joined up with some other musicians in the congregation and started leading some of the worship music.  He said all the right things, and it appeared that he loved Jesus.  However, he had money troubles.  On a number of different occasions, he shared with various members of the congregation some immediate need that he had, and a number of them loaned him money.  Eventually, he got one member to loan him several hundred dollars – supposedly to pay his rent for that month.  Soon afterwards, he disappeared, and we never saw him again.

         As it turns out, he had done the same thing at a number of different churches.  The money was all for drugs, and he would stay in a congregation just long enough to gain people’s trust and to get as much money as he could before the people realized how many of them had been loaning him money.

         Of course, appearances can be deceiving in the opposite way, as well.  There can be people who don’t look like much, and who maybe don’t look what we would call “respectable”, but who live with the love of Jesus in their hearts.  Without giving them the benefit of the doubt and actually getting to know them, we might never see that Christ is at work within them.

         This is just one example of the sometimes hidden nature of the kingdom of God.  There are small seeds which end up producing great things. It is also like yeast, which the woman quite literally hides among the flour.  And it is like a treasure that is hidden in a field.  It is not always with great signs and wonders that God is made known, but in little things like growing seeds and leavening yeast.

         Billy Graham wrote about how much his work was just like sowing seeds (Just As I Am).  He didn’t always see immediate results, but sometimes he would hear months or even years later about the effects of his Crusades.  In similar fashion, it can sometimes look to us as if nothing is happening.  People don’t seem to be responding.  The church doesn’t seem to be growing.  People seem to be less committed rather than more committed.  Yet, do we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear what God is doing?

         God works through the little things.  God works through ordinary people just like you and me.  God works through the Holy Spirit, who empowers us, produces fruit, and changes people’s hearts.  And so, for our part, we are called to keep on doing the little things.  We are called to prayer.  We are called to do what we can for one person at a time.  We are called to keep on planting seeds, and to keep on giving invitations, and to keep on living faithfully.  For it is God who gives the growth and who uses small beginnings in order to do great things.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Epiphany 6 (NL 1)                            Matthew 13:24-43

February 17, 2019

St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church

Pastor Lynne Hutchison

© 2019 Lynne Hutchison  All Rights Reserved