“LEARNING THE GREEN THUMB”

            I was never meant to have green thumbs. Some authority adult guided me when I was a boy to a garden bed and bid me pull out some tough looking things called weeds then left me to it. They were certainly tough weeds and the novelty of this new experience soon wore off once my hands started protesting.

            Much more inviting were similar looking plants nearby and I found them much easier to pull out. The authority adult returned to scrutinise what I’d done and I looked up with my beaming smile to receive my well-deserved praise. Instead a thundery brow loomed down on me, “You stupid little boy. You were meant to pull out those infernal weeds, not those flower plants I planted yesterday.” Sigh! Ever since then I’ve been guilty of watering plants that ought not to have be watered and leaving unwatered those plants that ought to have been watered. Gardeners, have mercy on me!

            How that reminds me of Jesus’ Parable of the Weeds found in Matthew 13:24-30 among the parables of growing things. Weeds are defined as plants in the wrong place. They have a special habit of sneaking among the “good” plants and using them as shields when human hands reach down to uproot them. I am sure other would-be gardeners have caused some collateral damage in finding they have uprooted the wrong plants in their tidying up the garden patch.

            The gardener in this parable is fortunately very wise. Obviously having heard of my experience in my boyhood attempts at horticulture, he hesitates to let his staff loose on his garden at this point, preferring to wait until the reapers can better distinguish the crops.

            If only we could take this to heart more often today. Over this year or more, two great ancient cities have been destroyed before our televiewing eyes.

Aleppo was known to me in my childhood as a prominent trading centre, and Mosul was just across the River Tigris (one of the first rivers mentioned in the Bible) from even more ancient Ninevah, capital of ancient Assyria, known to us from the Book of Jonah and other parts of our Old Testament. To see such ancient history destroyed before our eyes is enough, in itself, to make one weep.

            Aleppo and Mosul have been unlucky to be caught up in two not unrelated wars continuing side by side. Invading forces have determined to root out militant resistance hiding within those cities among the terrified citizens. On this morning’s news, I learned that 40,000 civilians in Mosul have been killed, and God knows how many before in Aleppo.

            Tragically absent in all of the falling of Aleppo and Mosul is the wise words of the gardener in this parable. The “weeds” defending their patch in these respective cities have been hiding behind the civilians, effectively using them as human shields. Families able to flee are caught in the cross-fire, escaping one danger and succumbing to another. Just seeing their distressed faces and hearing their stories of unrelenting crises brings out the lament in me. Good Lord! Where are you?

            We hear excited shouts of victory with guns let off into the air and flags flying as if returning from a footy match where our team has won. The weeds have been taken out, yes, but what a pyrrhic victory with even more civilians, children, women, and men, those who couldn’t get out of the road in time, the casualties numbering much more than these “weeds”.

            Just imagine these cities were ours, every place bearing our postcode number reduced to unlivable rubble, family members, friends and neighbours no more to be seen or heard and we reduced to living from crisis to crisis. Not even a church building for shelter. Doesn’t bear thinking about it, does it?

            All this has happened before, of course. During the Normandy invasion after D-Day, the ancient city of Caen was bombed by the Allies to flush out German defenders, who had already retreated. Look up for yourselves the number of civilian citizens who perished in what was then considered a necessary act. “C’est la guerre!” was the resigned shrug.

            It’s so easy to plunge right in when wrongs need to be righted without considering the collateral damage which may well exceed the worth of the effort made. The number of civilians caught in crossfire by being in the wrong place at the wrong time because of human irresponsibility should sit heavily on human conscience while God weeps over the loss of human beings loved by him and by one another, future doctors, teachers, prime ministers, scientists all necessary to the future of their communities.

            Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers, as Tennyson keeps reminding us.

We may know this parable but we also need to have the wisdom to remember it when tough decisions are being made.

“WHAT IS FAIR?”

           

What is our place in God’s world? Synod is looming with some thorny issues and difficult decisions. Social Justice Sunday is upon us. The challenge of ethical choices within a world not known for fairness stalks us relentlessly.

The recent re-telling of the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard (Matt 20:1-16) brought back to my mind an historical event in Australia just over a century ago. High Court Justice Henry Bournes Higgins (1851-1929) brought down a judgement establishing the basic wage as a fair and reasonable return for work done that enabled a family of five to survive. A son of a Methodist minister, he would have heard his father preach on this parable and I would like to think that it remained in the back of his mind when he considered his judgement.

The story also reminded me of today’s employment difficulties for the young with little work experience, for the older workers past their peak, income discrimination based on gender, and for those with disabilities, whether from birth or acquired, who are unable to compete in the labour market.

Whatever is trumpeted about the market, we cannot say that is fair. Both business and politics are practised in a “hard ball” way with no quarter given to any vulnerability. This parable still embarrasses those of us who, consciously or unconsciously, evaluate human life and dignity according to economic worth.

Jesus, as usual, turns such thinking on its head. God wants us, so Matthew’s gospel tells us, to look at people regarding their needs rather than their worth. It becomes a decision made not just about “bottom line” figures but involving moral and ethical choices which cannot and must not be evaded.

We use the word “grace” for a number of things. I had a great-aunt and now a great-half-niece both named Grace. We say grace before meals. The grace features in the Benediction. Grace is God providing space for us to breathe in a world that attempts to confine us within the straightjackets of our human invention.

Every one of us breathing depends upon the unpredictable grace of those stronger than us. The market has no grace. That alone comes from God as expressed through Jesus Christ. Those around us can only know grace when it is can be demonstrated and thus recognised. Thus the least deserving labourer in the vineyard experienced the evaluation of his need rather than what his labour was worth. We have the opportunity to act like the householder in the parable rather than like the earliest labourers and thus show grace is still possible.

“HOPE DURING TEETH-GNASHING TIMES”

It was this final part of the reading that didn’t go down too well. It concluded Matthew’s version of the Parable of the Talents with the words,

“Cast this worthless servant into the outer darkness. There, men will weep and gnash their teeth.” (Matt 25:30 RSV)

Charming! These are the bits of the Gospel we don’t particularly like. We prefer the “gentle Jesus meek and mild” we used to sing about in Sunday School.

Outer darkness, weeping and wailing and the gnashing of teeth is generally well kept off the pulpit agenda unless the preacher for the day has got up out of the wrong side of the bed.

Yet, while this passage was being read in churches all round the world, there have been worthless servants being cast into outer darkness and there have been men (and women and children) weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. In the world backdrop to this passage, Prime Ministers of southern European nations have been summarily dismissed from political office. Most of Europe still is in daily anguish over this humungous debt hanging overhead like a thundercloud threatening to burst into the recession we may still have to have.

I don’t know how many have joined the dots between this Gospel reading and the European debt. Definitely, those who ought to have known better have wasted their talents, living and spending beyond their means and avoiding paying tax. Now the vultures are coming home to roost and almost everyone is going to hurt. Worse still, waste and irresponsibility are by no means confined to the shores north of the Mediterranean. There but for the grace of the banks go us.

What is worse is that while wealth floats upward, poverty plummets downward. We do not yet know how to discipline the rich without the poor suffering more, neither do we yet know how to raise the poor without the rich benefiting further.

From deep within this dilemma, the jacaranda trees remind us with their cascading purple blossoms that we are once more entering the season of Advent where the purple is also displayed in worship. Like Lent, Advent bids us pause and reflect even within the most hectic time of the year. Even the shooting agapanthus keeps reminding us with its own purple that THE time is coming.

God, we need hope! We can’t rely on the market! That’s up and down like a Manly ferry crossing the Heads, also sending us pale. But hope cannot come without personal and corporate responsibility. Only when we avail ourselves to bring hope to others can we appreciate hope for ourselves.

It is interesting to read that the Parable of the Talents is immediately followed by the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats where we are accepted or rejected by the grace we extend “to the least of these”. Grace, hope, peace, trust and love dry up within us if we do not also pass it on. What Jesus does for us, we pass on even “to the least of these”, even to those who have failed the test of the parables of the bridesmaids and the talents.

These acts of grace, I believe, would have saved a lot of anguish in Europe. Just as motor parts grind when the oil is not applied, neither can any economy survive without the practice of grace.

We receive God’s gift of His beloved Son, born like us, and we pass it on.

This Advent we will hear Christmas Bowl stories of humble people who have been walking in the darkness of poverty, still looking for a great light, the good news of great joy of Jesus Christ expressing himself to them through our gifts that have first come to us in him.

May God empty himself again this time to you with his full expression of hope that this dysfunctional world still needs.

The Good Word

The season for Parables has come round again. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus comes out with pithy images followed by sometimes short but involved stories. Many arguments still abound about what they all mean. Even 2000 years on, Jesus still keeps us guessing. There never comes a time when we can say that we have him all tied up. Even today, he is far ahead of us, waving for us to lift our stumbling feet to follow.

I think I have mentioned before about the way these parables come in sets and layers. Jesus begins with snapshots of the Kingdom of Heaven – mustard seeds, buried treasure, pearls, and dragnets. Later, stories develop. Towards the end of Matthew’s Gospel we read of talents, wise and stupid bridesmaids, and the sorting out of sheep and goats.

Taken together the message is plain. True fulfillment is found by encountering and accepting God’s new Kingdom in the way Jesus has revealed. To turn one’s nose up at it leaves one stewing in one’s own juice.

We may find this sense of judgment harsh. We want an inclusive world where no one gets left out but we cannot escape life’s hard realities that behaviour does become unacceptable when it damages other lives. In the parable of the sheep and the goats, damage can be caused by neglect as well as by offensive action.

It is impossible to get to first base with Jesus until the penny drops that the Kingdom of Heaven could only be launched into the world once Jesus had sacrificed himself for it to happen. Far too many become fixed with the idea that for the “right” thing to happen, others must suffer. The Kingdom of Heaven was not to be ruled over by a monomaniacal control freak who would terrorise those within range. Jesus stood this evil notion on its head. The Kingdom of Heaven would be ruled over by one who endured torture rather than inflict it.

Matthew’s Gospel reminds us that even with this self-sacrifice, there is no guarantee that everyone can be saved from stewing in their own juice, and too often the innocent are tragic victims of another’s evil acts. Jesus does not have his head in the clouds. He often comes out with hard realities and that choices have to be made. The good news is that these choices can be made, and the vicious spiral downwards can be halted once a change in direction occurs.

Coupled with the Matthew readings are those from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. In my first years of conscious discipleship, I was guided by J B Phillips’ modern version of the Epistles which expressed Paul’s writings in English plain enough for a callow teenager to appreciate. My paperback has long disintegrated complete with my passionate underlinings of words, sentences and passages, and I must say that the Epistle to the Romans received the most attention.

For instance, Romans chapter 8 gave me much reassurance during my teenage mood swings constantly reminding me that nothing, no, nothing, could separate me from the love of God expressed in Christ Jesus. Romans chapter 12 presented me with the Disciple’s Charter for living and slowly channelled me into values and behaviour better fitting a dinkum disciple for life. I am sure this Epistle has been the most influential (for good) within the whole of human history. Martin Luther, John Wesley, and Karl Barth are just a few who had their lives re-routed, not to mention the common variety of disciples who quietly become salt of the earth.

Parables and an Epistle written nearly 2000 years ago are still influencing countless numbers of people to re-think their priorities. When we wake in the morning to the radio news of yet more violent slayings and other traumatic events, the good news has not yet done being spread. Let’s be part of the good news.

Parable of the Weeds

SERMON CNR 1060

PENTECOST 5a Mosman 17 July 2011, 9.30am

Gen 28:1-19a; Ps 139:1-12, 23f; Matt 13:24-30, 36-43

“PARABLE OF THE WEEDS”

Matt 13:24-30, 36-43

1 BACK TO THE GARDEN

1.1 From the Parable of the Seeds

This is our 2^nd week into the gardening season.

Last Sunday, we would have heard Matthew’s account of the Parable of the Sower, or more accurately the Parable of the Seeds.

After all it was about what happened to the seeds.

That was Matthew’s introduction to the feast of parables of the Kingdom of Heaven which today follows last week.

These parable will crop up again until the final parable of the Sheep and the Goats towards the end of chapter 25.

1.2 Why I am not a gardener

Many of us will have heard these parables often enough to have worked out how similar this Parable of the Weeds is to that final parable.

It’s the same problem.

How do you tell the weeds apart from the wheat?

The adults in my home life decided when I was a boy that I should get stuck into gardening.

In those days, little boys had to start off, not by planting, that was the grown-up’s privilege, but by weed-pulling.

I tried my hand at some weeds but they were tough and hard for little boys to pull out.

There were other green things nearby that were much easier to pull out so I started pulling them out with much more enthusiasm.

Besides, they were conveniently in neat rows, not higgled-piggledy like those tough things.

An adult in my life came to hover over me and I looked upwards to receive well-deserved praise.

High-pitched agitated tones were not what I was expecting.

“You’ve pulled out all the plants I put in just yesterday!”

My budding career in horticulture came to an abrupt end and my fingers have none of that green tinge you would expect of normal gardeners.

2 GETTING TO THE DILEMMA

2.1 Weeds just show up (Matt 13:25)

When reading this parable, I’ve always wondered why it was necessary to put in the bit (v25) about enemies coming in to sow weeds.

Weeds just seem to show up in gardens.

Maybe they were here beforehand all those centuries before we occupied this country and began growing things we liked.

Maybe they came from seeds that from overseas aboard the old sailing ships or their cargo.

I’ll let you tell me about the weeds in your garden over morning-coffee even though I know you won’t ever want to let me loose in it.

2.2 Finding the classroom culprit

The parable is not so much about weeds but that hard fact that not only are they sometimes hard, to me at least, to distinguish them from the real thing, but hard to separate out without damaging the growing plants.

We would be living under a rock if we’ve not experienced this dilemma sometime.

We’ve been in a class in school when one student, generally a boy, of course, gets up to mischief.

The teacher comes in, sees the disruption and the damage, calls for the little miscreant to own up, and then listens to the longest innocent silence heard in that classroom for ages.

What does the teacher do?

With no one to punish, and the teacher’s authority at stake, the whole class is kept in, or misses out on that promised trip next week.

Should the teacher have punished the whole class because that little weed couldn’t be found out, or should have the teacher ignored the whole incident?

Any teachers here can tell me the answer over morning coffee?

2.3 Human Shields and Collateral Damage

Worse still are the war situations and the collateral damage that comes with them.

What should one do when a dangerous enemy is using human shields?

How can one ensure that one’s bullets are marked with “enemy only” on them?

Close to home, my father was a bomb aimer on Lancasters in WW2.

How could he ensure that his bombs landed on the military targets without some innocent person getting in the way?

3 GETTING TO THE HEART OF THE GOSPEL

3.1 The Barbary Sheep

This is the heart of the Parable of the Weeds.

How does one punish the guilty without affecting the innocent?

How does one punish a bad parent without the child still suffering?

You may try to reassure me that the final Parable of the Sheep and the Goats will help me tell the difference.

After all who can mix up a merino with an angora?

Last time I visited the Zoo down the road, I saw this beastie with curved horns and a long beard perched up on the top of a large rock.

“What a magnificent goat,” I burst forth.

I then read the sign – “Barbary Sheep”.

Perhaps I should have stuck to horticulture.

3.2 Portia to our Shylock

It always amazes me how Jesus came to this dilemma so early in his life and ministry.

He puts the brakes on our passionate rush to judgement.

He becomes the Portia to our Shylock.

More than that, rather than inflict judgement that would harm the innocent, he was prepared to endure it himself.

Within the heart of the dilemma lies the heart of the Gospel.

4 WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

4.1 Groans of Frustration

Where does this leave us on this cold winter’s morn?

In his Letter to the Romans, Paul writes about the groans of frustration that we all go through.

And we go through them, even when we seek what is good, but evil keeps using that good as its shield.

The Book of Revelation reminds us when the archangel Michael is used to conquer the dragon of evil, that only spiritual power can overcome this super-human sabotaging force of evil.

4.2 Sorting out the dilemmas

Paul reassures us that we have been adopted by God himself.

This leads us open to receive something of the wisdom Jesus himself showed, to receive that continuous growth in maturity of the spirit that will help us recognise more of these dilemmas before we fall into those traps.

In all, we are helped to love beyond the anger and to await those times when dilemmas can be eventually sorted out.

Meanwhile, garden in peace!

AMEN