July 19th, 2020. 
YOUNGER SAINTS
Somewhere today: A book of Peace. By Shelly Moore Thomas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlDlu111Em4
Prayer: Peace-giving God, we thank you for all the ways you teach us to be kind and peaceful with one another. Help us remember wherever we are today to be a reflection of your peace. Amen.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
-Please be here next week for service as we continue the selfless practice of sheltering in our homes to not expose one another to COVID.
-Thank you for continuing to tithe.
-Please check or private Facebook page for prayer requests and internal news.
– Please check our public Facebook page for songs, inspiration, and public information.
CENTERING
Have you ever wondered what the National UCC does with donations? Sometimes, amazing things like this book. It was sent to all of us. It is brand new and called “Emerge: Blessings and Rituals for Unsheltering.” It has everything from blessings for leaving our houses to go out into masked zones; to confessions and hymns and even a curse on COVID.
Today, let us center with one of these new prayers. This one is by Mary Luti, titled,
“ Litany for Passing the Peace.”
We cannot touch just now
NOT YET
We cannot shake, embrace, slap each other on the back, or kiss
NOT YET
We cannot move around the space,
Up and down the aisles
Jostle each other
Trip over kids,
Reach down the pew to greet
The elderly gent who can’t get up
Scan for the couple who came last week
Hope this raucous time will go on and on—
Or pray that it won’t, and the organist will cut it off
With the intro to the next hymn – we can’t
NOT YET.
But the peace that passes understanding
Is not like a virus.
It doesn’t need contact to infect.
It’s like the Spirit and the wind.
IT GOES WHEREVER IT WILLS,
WHEREVER WE SEND IT.
Through webs and nets and wires,
It googles and zooms to everyone
Whose heart needs peace,
And to every place
There is no peace.
And we will share it now:
The peace of Christ be with you!
AND ALSO WITH YOU.
We pray today,
Holy God – unite our hearts across time and space. Listen to the prayers we offer with words, with sighs, with smiles, and with songs. In our homes let there be peace. In our online words let us write peace. In our interactions with others, let there be peace. We praise you, God of peace! Amen.
HYMN: The Peace of the Earth by John L. Bell of Wild Goose https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYsTzXby4vU
SCRIPTURE
Our scripture today is another parable! Another gardening and farming parable – and like last week, the disciples ask Jesus to explain it. The six verses the lectionary cut out are more parables, which we will circle back around to in other weeks. The parable and its explanation are put together today.
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
SERMON
Jesus flat out tells us the parable, and its explanation. What more is there to say? Perhaps only ruminating, thinking, about how to apply this wisdom to our lives.
The good seed, the good news, is spread by Jesus all across the field of the world. Remember in the previous parable the seed is spread extravagantly – spread for everyone – even though who can’t or who won’t receive it yet. It is still offered.
The good news of God’s love is offered to all people.
Remember we are known by our fruits. Good wheat produces more tasty wheat. Bad wheat, tares, are weeds and produce bad fruit – seeds of discord that make MORE weeds and MORE woes.
So the people who are the Children of the Kindom of Heaven are growing the fruits of the spirit – Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Faithfulness, & Self-Control. They inspire others to grow the same thing: God’s love on earth.
The people who are the Children of the Enemy produce the opposite – Hate, Sorrow, War, Impatience, Cruelty, Evil, Harshness, Unreliable, and Undisciplined. They inspire the same in those around them. Inspire making hell on Earth.
In the story of Jesus the good seed and the bad seed looks the same. It’s all just grasses. The only way you can tell the non-wheat from the wheat is by their fruits… or more specifically, what their fruits do.
Wheat is sustaining. Nourishing. Darnel, or tares, or the weeds, make a person intoxicated in a small amount. In a large amount they’re deadly. In Greece in Jesus’ time darnel was called the “frenzy” plant and was used in worship rituals for frenetic visions of the gods. Shakespeare writes it is what makes King Lear so insane. It causes vision issues, drooling, hallucinations and of course… death.
Almost no wheat crops have darnel hiding in them anymore. But even just a few centuries ago… it was everywhere and a real danger if you didn’t realize this “mimic weed” had snuck into your crop or was dropped off at your mill.
So the people who are living into the Kindom of God bring nourishment, substance, goodness.
And the people who are living into Hell bring death, destruction, and evilness.
And they look the same. They’re planted beside each other. They grow together in the same communities and households. They’re siblings! They’re the same races and genders and sexes. They go to the same schools and lead the same lives… except for one important difference…
Their impact on others.
One is a joy. One is a sorrow. One brings love. One brings hate. One brings life. One brings death.
When the slaves in the story – when the workers of Jesus – see the darnel growing among the wheat, they go to their master and say, “We need to pull this crud out! Root it out! It’s dangerous!”
But the master, Jesus, says no. Let them grow together. If the workers of Jesus yank out all the bad weeds they’re damage the good crops too.
This is a… a really weird comfort for me. “Whitney, why do you like weeds?!” is a conversation for another day and we’ll chat gardener to gardener.
Today… picture your own family. There are people in it who are weeds. You know it. I know it because every single family on Earth has trouble makers.
But are they ALWAYS weeds? I imagine not. They’re likely like most humans and producing some bad, and some good, fruit.
My own heart is like that. Sometimes beautiful ripe, loving cherry tomatoes come from me… and sometimes beautiful, ripe, deadly nightshade berries. Sometimes carrots… sometimes hogweed.
Most of our food has a deadly relative. And Jesus tells us not to pull up all these bad weeds in our families, in our communities, and in our hearts because by yanking out the bad, we also will hurt the good.
This makes me conclude 2 things about Jesus’ parable.
1 – it ain’t over until it’s over. At Harvest Time, when the Trumpet Sounds and we rise to our names before God – then we’re judged. Until then, we’re growing and developing. We could easily grow into weeds or grow into fruit. And in the field – in the world – we can’t tell who is hell bound or who is heaven bound. Judgment is reserved for God alone. That family member you thought of… the story isn’t over for them. They can turn around yet and be a glorious stalk of wheat. That awful thing you did yourself. That nasty nightshade I produced myself… the story isn’t over yet. We can repent and turn things around. We can’t change the past, but God gives us the freewill and grace to change the future.
2 – We need each other. Even the awful awful people around us. Now THAT’s humbling to me. When Jesus told us to pray for our enemies… he meant it. We need our enemies. Yanking them out will only harm ourselves in the process. The caveat, the note, to this is that Jesus was speaking of the world and not your own lives. Don’t stay in abusive situations and think you need to stay. No. You are a child of God and deserve to be treated as such. Jesus was speaking of the whole world – the whole field. In the world, wiping out … all the Democrats… all the Republicans… all the Blacks… all the Whites… all Muslims or Gays or whatever group of people it is you think the whole wide world could do without… will only cause more harm to the world. We need each other. The diversity of humanity reflects the diversity of God’s creation – for we are a part of it – and that diversity is needed for health, vitality, resiliency.
Lastly this parable is pastoral. It takes the onus, the duty, of us to go out judging and killing and replaces it with a focus on instead producing good fruits and letting God handle the judgment. It reassures us that yeah, there’s badness in the world. There’s people producing hellish things. It’s not imagined. We ourselves have done some of this badness. But that’s not the final word. It’s not yet harvest time.
May you produce good fruit, sisters and brothers! Fruit that is tasty and nourishing. Fruit that gives life and gives hope. Fruit that inspires and uplifts. Fruit that speaks the truth in love. Fruit that is uniquely yours and we – those growing around you – need.
May God bless us where we are growing, and bless all the space between us, until we meet again.
Amen.
Want to know more about darnel? https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/wheats-evil-twin-has-been-intoxicating-humans-for-centuries
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 