Sermon by Revd Caroline Risdon
Sixth Sunday after Trinity, 19 July 2020
You can hear an audio recording of the sermon here
May I speak in the name of the Living God, our Creator, our Redeemer and our Sustainer, AMEN.
Over the spring, as part of our first term at the “Risdon Academy of Home-Schooling,” we did a fair bit of seed sowing. There is a lovely rhythm to planting and watering and watching to see if anything grows and it is rather satisfying when shoots start to spring up. But that is all it takes to render me completely out of my depth! I have no real idea as to why some plants thrive and others don't; and I'm hopeless at discerning which is a plant and which is a weed. But even I, in my ineptitude, can understand something of the experience of sowing and growing!
Today's parable is about the farmer sowing good seed only to find, as the ears of wheat began to grow, that an enemy had sowed weeds all over the field. When the workers realise what has happened, they are horrified and want to pull the weeds out immediately. They do not understand quite how destructive their actions would be, that they would in fact ruin the wheat as well the weeds.
There are two points I think worth noting about the story. Firstly, it is not just a story for us as individuals. Jesus describes the whole world as a wheat field, full of the good things God has sown. The earth is full of the beauty of nature; and the love and care we show to each other. It is full of good gifts, like the hobbies or activities that lift our Spirits or the opportunity to come together to praise and worship God. At the same time the world, the wheat field, is hurt by the evil things that take root. Evils like jealousy and greed; like war and famine; like forgetting about or turning away from God.
So we have something to learn at a communal level. The Kingdom of God is not primarily for the Church but for the whole of creation. As Christians we are called to be bearers of the truth in the world. But the truth about God's love for us is a truth and a love available to all. God's love is not something we as a people or as a Church can generate nor somehow own. We know this because we learn that the seed grows 'while the people are sleeping.' The miracle of the love of God, the seed, burying itself deep into the hearts of people and taking root there, is a miracle indeed. It is not reliant on us. It is certainly not ours to colonise.
Secondly, we learn a lot by placing ourselves into the story as the individual plants which are growing. Naturally, as Christians belonging to this Church community, we think of ourselves as the wheat; the ones leading useful and fruitful lives. So what does it mean that the weeds and the wheat look almost identical?
It means that the plants true nature can only be know later. And we must be truthful with ourselves- we have each taken actions based on our greed; based on our need for status in this world. We have been lazy and complacent when it comes to challenging our own privelege and the structures that discriminate against and oppress others. Throughout our lives we will wrestle with our capacity to be both wheat and weed. That is our lifelong journey as people of faith.
I said last week, and I say it again now, parables really exist to show us something of the abundant nature of God's love. In this parable we meet God as the farmer who is unbelievably patient- allowing the weeds and the wheat to grow together, knowing that their true nature will only be revealed at the harvest. We might also call this faithfulness.
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father
There is no shadow of turning with Thee
Thou changes not, Thy compassion's, they fail not
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me
AMEN.
Revd Caroline Risdon, 19/07/2020