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Sermon July 19, 2020
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers,
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s
Seventh Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 11, Year A, Track 2
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp11_RCL.html#gsp1
But he replied, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ Matthew 13:29-30
Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen! Matthew 13:43
Please be seated.
My mother loved to weed. Weeding was a stress reliever, I guess. When my mother could no longer bend over due to a spinal cord injury, she had flower boxes built tall enough for her to stand and plant flowers and yes, weed.
Any of us who garden or do yard work, know the weeds come with the plants. And when plants are young, it is sometimes hard to know if a plant is a weed or the plant you wanted to grow.
And pulling out the weeds is challenging sometimes, especially when doing so could also pull up the plants you want to grow. Sometimes you have to let them grow together.
Our Gospel reading today is a familiar parable told by Jesus to his followers. Good seed is planted which should grow into wheat. Then the evil one comes and intentionally plants weeds amongst the seed. In some translations, the weeds are called tares. The tare plant looks exactly like wheat when it first comes up. It’s very hard to tell the two plants apart.
Now wheat is a grain that humans can eat, while tare is a plant that is toxic to humans, causing them to appear drunk. Yet, we hear that the tares should not be pulled up, lest they also pull up the wheat. Instead, everything will be gathered at the time of the harvest and the tares will be separated and burned.
Jesus explains that the wheat represents the people who follow God and the teachings of Jesus Christ, while the tares represent people who are evil. Jesus tells us we will live surrounded by evil or surrounded by things that pull us away from God…things that may appear good and in the end are not.
So how do we live midst the evil of the world? What helps us stay rooted in the love of God and the teachings of Jesus Christ to love God, love our neighbor and love ourselves?
Yesterday morning I was sad to hear of the death of Rep. John Lewis. To me, he was a person who was wheat midst the tares. I was fortunate to hear Rep. Lewis speak a number of times. Yet, the time I went with colleagues to meet with him on legislation to support the social work profession, is a meeting I will never forget.
Rep. Lewis was soft spoken and kind. He was extremely attentive to our meeting. He leaned towards you when you were speaking and I felt like his eyes could see deep down into my soul. In some ways, it was disarming and at first, most of us were tongue-tied. He listened deeply.
Most of you have probably read about Rep. Lewis—how he headed up the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC during the Civil Rights Movement. How at the age of 23, he was one of the speakers and probably one of the youngest speakers at the 1963 March on Washington. He was part of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965, and was badly beaten trying to cross the Edmund Pettis bridge. He was beaten and jailed numerous times in working and advocating for change… for equality and changes in the American apartheid system known as Jim Crow.
Rep. Lewis, while soft spoken, spoke powerfully and prophetically. He was also steeped in and committed to nonviolence as a tactic for change.
There is a memorial park on one side of the Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma with monuments to various people involved with the 1965 march. The monument to Rep. Lewis has this quote from him, “When we pray, our feet move.” Rep. Lewis was deeply spiritual. His advocacy and work was rooted in being wheat among the tares.
In an editorial in The New York Times this was said about Rep. Lewis’ philosophy and understanding of working for justice:
“The essence of the nonviolent life,… is the capacity to forgive — ‘even as a person is cursing you to your face, even as he is spitting on you, or pushing a lit cigarette into your neck’ — and to understand that your attacker is as much a victim as you are. At bottom, this philosophy rested upon the belief that people of good will — ‘the Beloved Community,’ as Mr. Lewis called them — would rouse themselves to combat evil and injustice.”
Wheat among the tares.
His family did not always support his actions. They told him not to get into trouble…that he needed to accept the way things were at the time. After meeting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks; however, he was inspired to “get into trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.”
In a 2018 post on Twitter, Rep. Lewis said: “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
And I say to us today that we should never be afraid to be the wheat among the tares, no matter the challenges! May we, like Rep. Lewis, be the good, necessary trouble that comes along with being the wheat among the tares. May we, like Rep. Lewis, be the righteous that shine like the sun in the Kingdom of God.
Amen
