God's Weedy Field

 Jesu Juva 

St. Matt. 13:24-30, 36-43                                                    

July 23, 2023

Proper 11A                                

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        We begin with the photo on the cover of today’s bulletin:  amber waves of grain—wheat ready for the harvest.  There are two kinds of people in this

world—people who look at that picture and say, “No big deal,” and people who are appalled that a perfect field could be tainted and blighted by such an ugly, insidious weed.  I personally can’t stand this photo—can hardly bear to look at it.  It agitates me.  What’s that weed doing there?  Get that green thing out of there!  Stop the car!  Let me wade into that wheat and extract the weed!         

          Every gardener—every farmer—knows that weeds are a perennial problem.  There are no vegetable gardens with only vegetables—no flower gardens with only flowers—no amber waves of grain with only grain.  The weeds are always there too.  And they’re sneaky, those weeds.  They cleverly confine themselves just inside the tomato cages.  They shelter securely beneath the broad leaves of zucchini plants.  There, in closest proximity to my most productive produce, are weeds.  And I can’t whack those weeds without also risking damage to the precious plants next to them.  And so I have learned to live with some weeds.  I tolerate them so as not to damage the nearby vegetables.

          In today’s Holy Gospel Jesus spins out a parable based on the perennial problem of weeds.  In this parable, “all the world is God’s own field.”  And in this field the Son of Man goes about sowing His good seed.  But this very same field—the very same furrows—are tainted, defiled, and contaminated by a weed-sowing enemy.  This enemy is the devil, and he’s bold and brazen in his ability to sow weeds in God’s good field.

          The first point of the parable is this: wherever the good seed of God’s Word is preached and planted, right there the devil is lurking in the shadows, waiting to work over the very same soil with a noxious array of bad seed.  Always, without fail, right alongside the Word of God something else—something undesirable—is also growing up.  The seeds of sin and unbelief are being mixed and mingled and planted right alongside the good, faith-producing seed of God’s Word.

          Do you realize what this means?  It means that even right here and right now—among those who offer here their worship and praise—the devil is also hard at work.  You are delusional if you think the demonic enemies of God only scatter their seeds in bars and brothels and internet chat rooms.  Oh, no.  They would much rather sow their sinful mayhem in the fertile soil between pulpit and pew, nave and narthex, in stately seminaries and at synodical conventions.  Whenever and wherever the good seed of God’s Word is being sown, there you can be sure the enemy is sowing his seed too.

          This is why the Scriptures teach us that while the church is made up of all those who believe in Jesus Christ, yet on this side of heaven, there are always hypocrites and evil persons sprinkled in among the saints (AC VIII).  Martin Luther saw this sad truth at work throughout the whole history of the church.  Wherever the pure gospel was preached and sown, there the devil raised up wicked men to oppose it.  Luther laid out his evidence for this in a sermon based on this very parable.  He said, “Angels become devils.  One of the apostles betrayed Christ.  Christians become heretics.  Out of the OT people of God came the wicked men who nailed Christ to the cross.  So it happens still [today]” (Day by Day, p.83).  Wherever God’s garden grows, the devil is also cultivating a crop of corruption.  Where God builds the church, the devil builds a chapel.

          Now, so far in this parable, there aren’t many surprises.  Our own experience bears out the truth that there’s always an orchestrated opposition to God’s good work in this world.  But the surprise of this parable—the thing that shocks the gardener in me—is that God tolerates the weeds—for now.  When the indignant servants in the parable ask permission to pull up the weeds, the Master says, “No—No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.  Let both grow together until the harvest.” 

The weeds in God’s field will not yet be pulled.  No herbicides will be applied.  The weeds are tolerated for now.  They are allowed to grow until the harvest.  What kind of gardener—what kind of farmer—could ever have such a high degree of weed tolerance?  Why does God permit the ungodly and the wicked to grow and thrive right next to and among the righteous?  Why is the Garden of our God NOT neatly manicured, but blighted with weeds?

Beloved in the Lord, this is how God’s garden grows: It grows with the devil’s weeds and the Savior’s fruitful vines intermingled and tangled up.  And sometimes, you can’t tell what’s what or who’s who.  If nothing else, this shows our God’s incredible patience for sinners—that He wants all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.  Unlike some other religions of the world which have no toleration—which teach and preach hatred and death to the infidels—your God is patient, not wanting anyone to perish—but for all to come to repentance and faith.

Jesus Christ Himself is the reason for God’s weed-friendly ways.  For in Jesus alone there is power to transform the world of weeds into the most fruitful branches of the living vine.  In Jesus, what is the vilest weed today could become the saintliest child of God tomorrow.  Because Jesus Christ has died for all—no exceptions.  In Him, God was reconciling the whole world of weeds to Himself, not counting our sins against us.  Instead, the Savior bore those sins in His body on the cross.  Jesus, the sinless Son of God, became like a giant weed Himself, carrying the sins of the entire weed-infested world.  And God the Father cut down that sin-bearing weed.  He was put to death for our trespasses and was raised again for our justification.  He was put to death and raised again so that sinners and unbelievers and the worst of all weeds might be brought to repentance and faith—and shine like the sun in the Father’s glorious kingdom.

This just leaves one question:  What should we do with the weeds for now?  What should we do about the people who by all appearances have separated themselves from Jesus and His church—or are actively working against Jesus and His church?  It’s clear that God tolerates them.  It’s certainly not our job to consign some to hell and others to heaven.  God and His angels will handle that at the end of the age.  Nor is it right for us to condone their sin in any way.  For now, God simply calls us to throw the doors of the church wide open, to give all men and women the chance to hear the Word of the Gospel and take it to heart—to speak the truth in love.  Because in hearing that Word is the power to transform the worst of weeds into living branches of the true vine, Jesus Christ.

Before you leave here today, I want you to think of the weeds you know—people who for all intents and purposes are not growing in the grace of Jesus Christ—people who manifest a spirit that is not the Holy Spirit.  There are certainly weeds among your co-workers, among your friends, among your family.  The message of the Scriptures concerning these souls is not just a message of toleration, but of love.  God calls us not just to live with the weeds—not only to tolerate them—but also to love them.  The great writer Dostoevsky said this about love: “to love a person means to see him as God intended him to be.”  Don’t see the weeds for what they are today; see them as what God intends them to be—see them for what they can be and could be in Christ.  In the garden of our God, there is not one living soul for whom we cannot hope and pray.  There is not one soul in whom the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot do miraculous, life-changing things.  We ourselves can testify to that.

Today you and I—we’re growing in the garden of our gracious God.  The seed of His Word has taken root in you.  You’ve been watered in the gentle splash of Holy Baptism.  There are weeds all around.  But the day will come when there will be a separation—when those who reject God’s free grace in Jesus Christ will be cast into eternal fire, and when those covered in the righteousness of Christ will shine like the sun in the Father’s eternal kingdom. 

Regarding that final separation, the German theologian Helmut Thielicke puts it into perspective:  “The last judgment is full of surprises.  The separation of the sheep and the goats, of wheat and weeds will be made in a way completely different from that which we permit ourselves to imagine.  For God is more merciful than we are, [God is] more strict than we are, and [God is] more knowing than we are.  And, in every case, God is greater than our hearts” (p.82).  He who has ears, let him hear. 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The Intersection of Seed and Soil

Jesu Juva

St. Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23                                                 

 July 16, 2023

Proper 10A                              

 Dear saints of our Savior~

          It’s been a quiet week in Whitefish Bay.  On Wednesday afternoon we got a good, soaking rain.  Nothing severe, just hours and hours of showers.  It was the kind of rain you really appreciate in mid-July.  You could almost hear the gardens growing.  Even the farmers down at the Chatterbox Café (typically a pessimistic bunch) even they were almost giddy over this gift of precipitation. 

          What perfect timing today for the Prophet Isaiah to remind us of rain’s religious significance.  It turns out that the rain that comes down from heaven—the rain that waters the earth and causes gardens to grow and crops to sprout and flourish—that rain is a lot like the Word of God.  God’s Word goes forth like rain and gets results.  The Word accomplishes what the Lord desires and achieves the purposes for which the Lord sends it.  So says Isaiah.

          But if that’s true, then why don’t we see the Word of God getting big results?  Why isn’t the church growing by leaps and bounds?  Why do baptized children grow up only fall away from the church?  Why is Christianity sharply declining in our country?  Why don’t we see the Word causing more fruitfulness in our lives and in the lives of other Christians?  Why does the Word seem so weak?

          To answer these questions, Jesus takes us to the garden—to the intersection of seed and soil.  This is the very first parable Jesus tells in Matthew’s gospel; and our Lord changes up the imagery just a bit.  In Isaiah the Word of God is compared to rain.  In the Parable of the Sower, the Word of God is compared to seeds.  Those seeds, Jesus says, are the “word of the kingdom.”  Those seeds are the good news about what God is doing for sinners through Jesus of Nazareth.  The seed of the Word gets sown in human hearts.

          But this parable immediately makes clear what an epic failure this whole seed-sowing endeavor is.  The intersection of seed and soil is sadly unsuccessful.  Some of this good seed get snatched away by the Evil One.  Other seeds sprout up joyfully for a while, only to wither later on because of tribulation and persecution.  Worry and greed also strangle a fair share of those sprouting seeds.  Only a tiny fraction of God’s great seeds—only the very slender portion that falls on good soil—actually grows and thrives and produces an abundant harvest. 

          This explains why the Word doesn’t always perform in the ways we expect.  Although the Word is powerful and filled with potential; the Word is also frail and fragile—like a little seed.  Tragedy struck the seeds in my own little garden this year.  For the first time ever, I planted sunflower seeds—the Kansas state flower.  I had visions of those big, round flowers greeting me every day this summer.  But a squirrel came along and dug up every single sunflower seed I planted.  I tried re-planting with the same result.  My seeds were sabotaged by squirrels!  

          There are no sunflowers on the bulletin cover this morning.  But you might recognize the cover art on today’s bulletin as “The Sower” by Vincent van Gogh.  I’m no expert on such things, but I believe this is an example of an

impressionist painting.  There’s no attention paid to detail.  But through the use of color, light, and shadow, you get the “impression” of a given scene.  You can almost feel the warmth of the morning sun as you view this painting.  A quirky television character I enjoy once surmised that van Gogh and Monet and Manet—they must all have been very near-sighted to produce such fuzzy, unfocused images.

          But couldn’t we also say the same thing about the sower in Jesus’ parable?  That sower went out to sow.  But his sowing would seem to indicate that he’s not seeing very well.  He sows those seeds like someone who’s blind as a bat.  Look at the guy—recklessly, randomly, haphazardly slinging seed from here to kingdom come.  On cement and sidewalk, between weeds and thorns, where soil is thick or thin, rich or poor—it matters not.  He’s prodigal in his planting—liberally letting fly fistfuls of His holy seed.  Why such sloppy sowing?

          This is our generous God, who wants all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.  This is our God who has reconciled the whole world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s trespasses against them.  This is our God who forgives wickedness and who remembers sins no more.  He sows the seed of His Word everywhere—on the homosexuals of Sodom, where only a few seeds take root while the rest fall on rocky hearts destined for fire and brimstone.  He sows the seed of His Word on the murderous people of Nineveh, preached by a reluctant prophet named Jonah, and the whole city of 120,000 repent in sackcloth and ashes.  Sometimes the seed sprouts and sometimes it doesn’t.  Our God sows here, there, and everywhere, sending preachers to preach the Word in season and out of season, To men who like or like it not.

          But my dear hearers of the Word, heed this warning:  It would be a big mistake to conclude that the seed of God’s Word has sprung to life in you because you’re the right kind of person—a good person—a noble and generous person—the kind of person that God can’t help but bring into His kingdom.  That’s a lie we love to believe.  So, repent and believe the truth:  When God first sowed His seed in your heart it fell on rock-hard soil—soil already choked by weeds and thorns and thistles. 

          Sinners cannot make themselves into good soil.  Sinners cannot make themselves receptive to the saving Word of Jesus.  No, we first need to be plowed under by the rototiller of God’s Law.  We need to be broken up and crushed—our hearts lacerated like furrows in a field by God’s holy Law.  This is why you ought to rejoice when someone confronts you with your sin, when you feel the pangs of guilt and shame, when you get caught red-handed, when you get a taste of your own death in the form of sickness and weakness.  When the mirror of God’s Law reflects the ugly truth of what you are in yourself, apart from Jesus—when you find yourself afflicted, persecuted, suffering, and broken to bits—rejoice!  Rejoice in those sufferings, for by them you are being transformed into rich, productive soil where the word and promises of God can be most potent and powerful.

          The Lord will not allow the plowed field of your heart to lie fallow.  The Divine Sower sows the seed right there—recklessly, all over the place.  The Sower sows and His Word has its way with you.  He waters it with water from the baptismal font.  He gives the growth in you.  And by His Word of grace and forgiveness, He makes your life fertile and fruitful, filled with good works.  God’s Word doesn’t go looking for good soil to fall into; it creates good soil for itself, no matter how inhospitable your heart may be.

          It would be as if I walked just a few blocks west of here and emptied all my seeds on the hot, dry, dusty hellscape of that no-man’s-land we call interstate 43 . . . and, by sunrise tomorrow that serpentine cement jungle would be transformed into a green and growing garden of delight—a construction zone blooming and brimming with greens and grains, ready for the harvest.  This is what our Lord does for you:  He transforms the hard pavement of your heart into a parking place for the seed of His Holy Word, for His Holy Spirit, for His holy body and blood, for His life that lasts forever.

          All this is because God’s holy Word—His seed—is packed with power.  It’s packed with the life of Jesus who died for your sins and who suffered hell in your place.  In the stripes and the deep furrows of His flesh your sin was planted.  He suffered, died and was buried in the earth, like a seed, so that He might have you and keep you as His own.  The nail-scarred hands of Jesus tell the whole story as to why God’s Word is producing so much fruit and so many good works in you:  God sowed; you received.  God transformed your rocky heart into good soil; you received.  God gave growth to His seed; you received.  God keeps you in the one truth faith, grants you daily forgiveness, and opens the kingdom of heaven to you and all believers; and you—you receive that salvation as a gift from God.

          The sower went out to sow His seed.  He has sowed it in you.  And when the final harvest comes, He will find in you an abundant crop of faith, hope, and love.  He who has ears, let him hear. 

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

A Prophet's Pain & Privilege

 Jesu Juva

St. Matthew 10:34-42                                                           

July 2, 2023

Proper 8A                                            

 Dear saints of our Savior,

          Get ready!  Get set!  Go!  What we hear from Jesus today are the words of a send-off—the final words of His great missionary discourse. For the very first time, men were being sent out on a mission to proclaim good news—to preach that the kingdom of heaven had come near in Jesus of Nazareth.  The Twelve disciples were being sent out to confess Jesus Christ before men—with the promise that Jesus would confess them before His Father in heaven.  The harvest was plentiful; and the workers were few—but those workers were on their way.  They were bolting from the starting blocks, equipped with nothing more than the great good news that Jesus Christ had come into the world to save sinners.  Get ready!  Get set!  Go!

          I can remember when I first got my marching orders from Jesus 27 years ago.  Fresh from the seminary and still wet behind the ears, my biggest problem was unrealistic expectations.  I already knew that I had the best job in the world; I just couldn’t anticipate all the pitfalls and perils of being a pastor.  Half the congregation was related to the other half; and most of the members had been members of that one congregation for their entire lifetime.  They knew nothing else.  Some of my most senior members were living in the very farmhouses where they had been born.  And then along came twenty-seven-year-old me with a slew of thoughtful suggestions about how we might change things up.  I was naïve to the Nth degree; and my slew of suggestions were (How shall I put this?) they were not favorably received.

          No one can say that Jesus didn’t prepare the Twelve for the pitfalls and perils they would encounter on their first assignment.  The Jesus they were proclaiming wasn’t just another religious teacher; He was the Son of God.  Jesus could be followed in faith or rejected in unbelief.  He could either be worshipped or despised.  But there could be no ambivalence—no middle ground.  Either He is God and Lord; or else there’s an imposter—an idol—on the loose.  And if there’s an idol on the loose—well, that’s a big problem.

          Those sent out by Jesus eventually have to do battle with these idols.  Jesus highlighted for the Twelve some of the most difficult idols they would have to confront:  Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.  It’s the idolatry of family!

          Jesus was teaching the Twelve—helping them to understand—that even God’s very best gifts (including children, parents, and spouses) can devolve into idols.  Jesus wanted them to see that idols are much more than figures carved from wood or stone.  Idols—the things that come between you and Jesus—idols are most often people—beloved people—but people we fear, love and trust more than Jesus.  Let’s not be naive:  All of us are idolaters at heart.  By nature, we do nothing better than accept good gifts from heaven (like family) and then turn those gifts into gods—into idols that demand everything from us.

          Let me give you a trendy example of how God’s gift of family can become an idol.  When the Christian child of Christian parents embraces a sinful lifestyle—and those parents choose to condone the sin and affirm the sin and support the sin.  It could be as commonplace as when a child chooses to live together with a significant other, without the benefit and blessing of marriage.  It could be when son or daughter chooses a spot on the sexual spectrum and announces that he/she is L or G or B or T or Q or “plus,” and the parents simply say, “We support you.”  Rather than confess Jesus (and honor marriage), rather than echo Jesus (that we should lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do), rather than confess Jesus (and how He has given us our very bodies and all our members), rather than confess Jesus (that our bodies—from head to toe—are temples of His Holy Spirit) Jesus is denied.  His teaching is denied.  His truth is not spoken in love.

          It’s all about idolatry.  Those examples are just a tiny fraction of the ways we all commit idolatry.  We all break no commandment more often than the first:  You shall have no other gods. Because we do not fear, love, or trust in God above all things, all things (including gifts from God) have the potential to become sinful idols—including the gifts of sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives.

          But hear this:  We don’t love our family any less by loving Jesus more.  No, in fact, the deeper our love for God, the deeper our love for our children, our parents, and our spouses will be.  Love—Biblical love—is living for and serving others.  Our love for our family members goes off the rails into idolatry NOT when we love them too much, but when we love them too little.  For how can love be true love when it’s working against the God who is love?  How can we say we love our children when, at the same time, we make them into idols?  How can you say you love your spouse when you love your spouse more than you love God?  No, we’re not loving too much when we commit idolatry; we’re loving too little—for it’s our selfish, self-loving side that transforms these gifts into gods—these people into idols.

          This is the mess that sin creates.  This is the mess which disciples and pastors and parents and spouses are called to confront in love.  Get ready.  Get set.  Go!  We are all sent by Jesus to some significant realm of responsibility—to call for repentance and reconciliation—telling people to confess the mess of sin; and turn to Jesus and live.  This isn’t easy; but difficult.  It’s part of a prophet’s pain—a pastor’s pain—a disciple’s dilemma—to witness the horrific effects of sin and its wages.  Sometimes it just breaks your heart.

          This is why your life always returns to, and revolves around, the Man from Nazareth.  His bleeding wounds, suffered on the cross, are the only remedy

for our idolatry.  His absolution is the solution to our self-love.  As He hung on the cross between heaven and earth, He was showing what true love really is—self-giving, self-sacrificing, love.  In the bleeding love of Jesus, there is healing and forgiveness for all of our self-love.  In that God—in the God who bleeds and dies for us on the cross—all of our self-made gods must die.  All of our idols get knocked off their thrones and are deposed forever.  Jesus Christ alone is God of gods and Lord of lords.  He pours His love into you.  It happens right here from this altar in the bread that is His body and the wine that is His blood.  He pours His love into you; and it flows through you to others: to your children, to your spouse, to your parents, even to your enemies.

          Get ready.  Get set!  Go!  But as the disciples of Jesus get ready to go, the Lord gives good news.  His missionary discourse concludes by laying out the privileges and promises that carry pastors and prophets along in their difficult and perilous work.  Jesus says:  Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives Him who sent me. What does this mean?  It means your pastors are just delivery men, delivering Jesus and His gifts to the door of your lips and heart.  When you receive and welcome these gifts—when you delight in the absolution we speak in the stead and by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ—Jesus has been delivered and received.  The good news has gone forth.  Faith is fortified.  Forgiveness received.  Heaven opened.  It’s a done deal.

          And did you hear what Jesus said about rewards for those who hear and believe?  For all those who hear and receive and welcome the messengers of Jesus, a prophet’s reward awaits you.  A righteous person’s reward awaits you.  Even the humblest, simplest act of hospitality shown to a messenger of Jesus comes with a reward:  And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.  Here Jesus calls His messengers “little ones.”  Whoever bears the gospel of Jesus to others is just a “little one,” unimpressive by the world’s standards.  But when you show a simple act of kindness to someone who brings Jesus to you, your reward is sure and certain.  When you deliver a cup of cold water to one of your pastors when he’s preaching on a hot July day, that’s a very good thing—something worthy of a reward in God’s eyes.

          Get ready!  Get set!  Go!  There is no better calling in all the world than to be sent by Jesus with the good news that God has reconciled the world to Himself in Christ, not counting our trespasses against us.  In Him we have the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.  That work is both my pain and my privilege as a pastor.  Thanks for receiving that good news from my lips—and for bearing and sharing that good news to others.  There’s nothing more rewarding.

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.