<\/p>\n
24<\/sup>\u00a0He put another parable before them, saying, \u201cThe kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, 25<\/sup>\u00a0but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. 26<\/sup>\u00a0So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. 27<\/sup>\u00a0And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, \u2018Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?\u2019 28<\/sup>\u00a0He said to them, \u2018An enemy has done this.\u2019 So the servants said to him, \u2018Then do you want us to go and gather them?\u2019 29<\/sup>\u00a0But he said, \u2018No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. 30<\/sup>\u00a0Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, \u201cGather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.\u201d\u00a0\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 36<\/sup>\u00a0Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him, saying, \u201cExplain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.\u201d 37<\/sup>\u00a0He answered, \u201cThe one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. 38<\/sup>\u00a0The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, 39<\/sup>\u00a0and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40<\/sup>\u00a0Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41<\/sup>\u00a0The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, 42<\/sup>\u00a0and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43<\/sup>\u00a0Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 13:36\u201343.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n The text for the sermon is the Gospel lesson just read.\u00a0 \u201cThe servants asked him, \u2018Do you want us to go and pull them up?\u2019\u00a0 \u2018No,\u2019 he answered, \u2018because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them.\u00a0 Let both grow together until the harvest.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 This is our text.<\/p>\n As a disciple of Jesus, I must confess that there are times when I get frustrated and discouraged by the evil in the world.\u00a0 Working as a chaplain at the naval hospital was a constant battle against evil, the kind of evil that we confront and feel powerless to overcome, sometimes even powerless to fight against.\u00a0 It\u2019s similar, I think, certainly to a lesser degree, but similar to the powerlessness that many of us feel when we go to the mailbox these days.\u00a0 Bills and bills.\u00a0 We feel like these companies have us over the barrel and we have to pay.\u00a0 Their record profits just don\u2019t seem fair.\u00a0 How is it they can still make money in an economy where so many are laid off?\u00a0 Greed is just sort of basic level human evil.\u00a0 The list is long\u2014certain people, organizations, companies like the cable or cell phone company, governments, groups, and gangs.\u00a0 There are even times when I get frustrated with people in the church who profess faith in Christ but who do some very weed-like things.\u00a0 Maybe you feel that way too.\u00a0 Like the disciple in the Garden of Gethsemane who drew his sword, our inclination is to take matters into our own hands.<\/p>\n Jesus\u2019 parable of the wheat and the weeds is intended for us, so, let\u2019s listen closely.\u00a0 Not only does Jesus intend that hearing this parable will ease our frustration, but much more.\u00a0 By giving us this parable, Jesus intends to make heirs of the kingdom of heaven even more so than if he simply stamped out evil.<\/p>\n We hardly need ears to hear how frustrating things already are.\u00a0 We know why Jesus gives us the parables.\u00a0 He wants us to know some aspect, some facet of the kingdom of God\u2019s rule that has already come to pass in this world, not just in the world to come.\u00a0 When Jesus says, \u201cthe kingdom of heaven is like\u2026\u201d he is saying \u201cWhen God is acting in our world to set things right and reestablish his rule over all people, it looks like this\u2026\u201d\u00a0 So the kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed excellent seed in his field but his enemy came in the night and sowed bad seed all through the field.\u00a0 Not many of us are farmers, but we have all experienced this.<\/p>\n The kingdom of heaven is like a woman was driving down the street with her hands at 10 and 2, doing the speed limit, and driving defensively but she was soon followed by a selfish driver who was not content to drive safely and was tailgating and flashing his lights at her.\u00a0 She thought she might call her boyfriend who was a cop and turn the guy in but instead she decided that the aggressive driver behind her might be persuaded by her example and drive safer and less aggressively in the future or one of these days, or he\u2019ll get nabbed for really speeding along this road and have his license taken away.<\/p>\n Now, that is a really terrible parable.\u00a0 Maybe I should start a collection of really terrible parables.\u00a0 But you get the point.\u00a0 Our evil is thinking that we could be the cop.\u00a0 Sure that too is pretty low on the scale of evil.\u00a0 I mean it\u2019s not murder or ethnic cleansing but as much as we experience these lesser evils we also commit many of these lesser evils too.\u00a0 That\u2019s the nitty gritty of the message this morning.\u00a0 Little evil comes from the same place as big evil.\u00a0 These big evils\u2014war, terrorism, rape, adultery, greed, and oppressive governments\u2014we know where these come from.\u00a0 We know from what kind of plant comes fruit like this\u2014fruit that kills and maims and destroys and oppresses.\u00a0 Or do we?\u00a0 We would prefer to think these terrible things spring from the hearts of horrible, diabolical people bent on destruction, soulless devils prowling the ravaged regions of our planet seeking someone to devour.\u00a0 But these evils come from the hearts of people.\u00a0 It\u2019s just one step from ethnic cleansing in Rwanda by people outside the church, to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia by people who claimed to be inside the church, the Orthodox Serbs.\u00a0 It\u2019s just one step from radical Islamic fundamentalism causing the death of innocents to radical Christian fundamentalism and the Crusades.\u00a0 These are not even categorical differences.\u00a0And so, just like we experience these little evils done to us, we commit some little evil, some racist slur or theft of a few dollars.\u00a0 But these little evils are just as evil to God as the big ones and they spring from the same place as the big ones.\u00a0 These things come from our hearts.\u00a0 This evil is like a weed and it\u2019s active against all that is good in the world, even the good that God has planted in each of us.\u00a0 And it\u2019s well-rooted in us and alive and active in us when we would despair of God putting all things right or when we might decide to take matters into our own hands and start to root up the evil at whatever the cost.\u00a0 And this tendency to do weed-like things is rebellion against God and his kingdom.\u00a0 But again this parable is not so much about what we do as much as it is about what God does.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n God is actively ruling his kingdom, we see.\u00a0 St. Augustine was more willing than probably some modern Bible interpreters to go one step further with the parable.\u00a0 He said, \u201cLet the one who is wheat persevere until the harvest; let those who are weeds be changed into wheat.\u00a0 There is this difference between people and real grain and real weeds, for what was grain in the field is grain and what were weeds are weeds.\u00a0 But in the Lord\u2019s field, which is the church, at times what was grain turns into weeds and what were weeds turns into grain; and no one knows what they will be tomorrow.\u201d\u00a0 (Sermon 73A. I, MA 1:249; WSA 3 3:295) If this is the case, then God, through the example of his well-planted field (a.k.a. his kingdom of heaven now arrived) is calling others into that kingdom.\u00a0 There may be some weeds among us here today whom God is calling to repent and believe in the kingdom Jesus has established.\u00a0 There may be some weedy things we wheat have done that need confessing too.\u00a0 Jesus is preaching to the crowds in one instance and instructing the disciples in another in an attempt that both would come to understanding.\u00a0 God has announced that it is his will that all come to saving faith in Christ and become true, bountiful wheat, and inheriting the kingdom.\u00a0 He is using this grace period to fulfill his plan for his kingdom.<\/p>\n But this parable gives us more than a sense of what God is doing in the face of that evil in our midst.\u00a0 Jesus lets those who have hears to hear understand why<\/em><\/strong> things are the way they are.\u00a0 Even though the Son of Man has already come and brought with him the restoration of the rule of heaven, things are this way because this present age is a period of grace.\u00a0 We all know what a grace period is.\u00a0 My rent is due on the first of the month, but I won\u2019t be penalized unless I pay it after the 5th<\/sup>.\u00a0 It\u2019s the same thing here.\u00a0 Now and ever since Jesus came, we have been living in a grace period.\u00a0 Our world is no longer the same since Jesus came preaching the kingdom of heaven and healing.\u00a0 The signs of the end of the age\u2014darkness covering the earth, dead rising from the grave, earthquakes\u2014these signs happened the day Jesus died.\u00a0 These other signs, the destruction of the Temple and the fall of Jerusalem they followed shortly thereafter.\u00a0 The end of the age has arrived and it didn\u2019t come with COVID-19 anymore than it came with the Spanish Flu a hundred years ago.\u00a0 Dear friends in Christ, yes, we are already in the end times and have been since the day of resurrection.\u00a0 The bill has come due.\u00a0 And Jesus has paid the bill in full.\u00a0 We are waiting for the grace period to be over and the final accounting to begin.\u00a0 We are living in the kingdom already now<\/em>.\u00a0 We are growing in the kingdom right now<\/em>.\u00a0 We are bearing fruit in the kingdom right now<\/em>.\u00a0 And this is the activity of God ruling his kingdom that he is making sure that not one of us risks being uprooted by an early culling of the evil weeds around us.\u00a0 That is good news.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been pondering this idea off and on most of the week.\u00a0 That God does not want to risk our uprooting by pulling out the evil around us.\u00a0 The servants know that the good wheat will bear more fruit if they are not in competition with the bad weeds.\u00a0 And this is what we want too isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 We don\u2019t want evil around us while we\u2019re trying to grow in the kingdom.\u00a0 We would be better off, we say, if God would uproot all that keeps us from becoming our full selves, if God would uproot all that keeps us from bearing the kind of fruit we have the potential to bear.\u00a0 History is filled with people who have thought that life would be a lot easier and a lot simpler if all the evil people were gone.\u00a0 Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, those are the easy ones.\u00a0 But how about Pope Urban II, Emperor Charles V, the television preachers with their high profile scandals, the low profile folks that nobody\u2019s ever heard of until the bad news hits the local news.\u00a0 How about us when we mess up royally and do or say things that we really should regret but pride will not let us?\u00a0 What does it say about us and our faith in God, when we, not the normal bad guys, when we take matters into our own hands for the sake of the kingdom of heaven?\u00a0 How many have been lost to the kingdom because they look at the atrocities\u2014great and small\u2014committed by the so-called Christians, and say, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t look like the meek inheriting the earth to me.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to have any part of that hypocrisy.\u201d\u00a0 They are smart people, and ethically, morally good people but they are now lost to the kingdom of heaven because we and people like us gave into temptation and decided that it would be better to uproot the evil now than follow the Word of the master and wait for the harvest.<\/p>\n Instead, God in Christ does something completely different.\u00a0 We know that Jesus came not only to sow, but to be wheat among us.\u00a0 He knows what it means to be surrounded by evil and chocked for growing room and to have everything you are called into question and discounted.\u00a0 Remember the kingdom is not about what we do.\u00a0 The kingdom of heaven that Jesus preaches is about what God has done for us in Christ.\u00a0 He become wheat so that we all might be wheat and he cross-pollinated<\/em> us with all his holiness and righteousness and blessedness that we might bear good fruit.\u00a0That\u2019s the message of Jesus\u2019 kingdom; it is explained completely in Jesus\u2019 cross.\u00a0 He has rooted us in his cross, in himself.\u00a0 We started the new Bible class this week on Psalms and we began at the beginning with Psalm 1, \u201cBlessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers.\u00a0 But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and his law he meditates day and night.\u00a0 He is like a tree planted by streams of water.\u201d\u00a0 He is like a stalk of wheat planted from good seed and tended by a caring farmer who will not risk pulling him up just to get rid of the evil around him.\u00a0 God has rooted us firmly in him who was rooted at the cross.<\/p>\n In this parable, Jesus gives us a snapshot of the kingdom of heaven.\u00a0 There is good and evil mixed together for now but God is in full control. \u00a0God sent his son to take away the sting of that evil in his own flesh.\u00a0 Even more so, Jesus answers the question, \u201cwhy?\u201d\u00a0 Why is it like that?\u00a0 Why does it look like the bad guys are winning?\u00a0 Because this time is a time of waiting.\u00a0 To pull the weeds out now would to risk pulling out too much wheat and our Lord would not suffer that any should be lost.\u00a0 The servants should not take matters into their own hands.\u00a0 History provides too many examples of this terrible mistake.\u00a0 Have faith in the plan of the sower, the landowner.\u00a0 Remember God is using this time to cross-pollinate and grow others and have them bear fruit in his kingdom.\u00a0 Remember, the harvest is coming and until then, may the Lord give us ears to hear.<\/p>\n The peace of God which passes all understanding stand watch over your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Rev. Andrew Smith<\/p>\n Heavenly Host Lutheran Church<\/p>\n Cookeville, Tennessee, USA<\/p>\n E-Mail: smithad19+prediger@gmail.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sermon for 7\/19\/2020 | Seventh Sunday after Pentecost |\u00a0Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 |\u00a0by Andrew Smith | 24\u00a0He put another parable before them, saying, \u201cThe kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, 25\u00a0but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,191,157,108,110,430,3,109],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-3049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-matthaeus","category-andrew-smith","category-beitragende","category-current","category-engl","category-kapitel-13-chapter-13-matthaeus","category-nt","category-predigten"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3050,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3049\/revisions\/3050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3049"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=3049"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=3049"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=3049"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=3049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}