‘Poems, Prayers and Promises’
Reflections on Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43
RCL Proper 16A
23 July 2017
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Matthew 13.24-30,
36-43
13.24 [Jesus] put
before them another parable: “The
kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; 25
but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat,
and then went away. 26 So
when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27 And the slaves of the
householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your
field? Where, then, did these weeds come
from?’ 28 He answered, ‘An
enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to
him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 29 But he replied, ‘No; for in
gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30 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.’”
36 Then [Jesus]
left the crowds and went into the house.
And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of
the weeds of the field.” 37
He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; 38
the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the
weeds are the children of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sowed
them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are
angels. 40 Just as the weeds
are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the
age. 41 The Son of Man will
send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and
all evildoers, 42 and they will throw them into the furnace of fire,
where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine
like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.
Let anyone with ears listen!”
Growing up in
Colorado in the late 1960’s and the 1970’s it was almost impossible not to have
encountered John Henry Deutschendorf, the son of a US military officer, who chose
a career in folk music, changed his name to ‘John Denver’ and moved to
Colorado. When I was in university a
local radio station would play his song, ‘Rocky Mountain High’ every Friday
afternoon and invite every listener to turn towards the Rockies, place a hand
over her or his heart and sing.
Earlier this past
week Paula was listening to some music at home.
As I was working in my study, I heard Denver’s familiar voice singing
one of my favourite songs, ‘Poems, Prayers and Promises’. The opening line caught me: ‘I’ve been lately thinking about my life’s
time, all the things I’ve done and how it’s been’. I think that it touched me because I have
been ‘lately thinking about my life’s time’ as I realize that retirement draws ever
closer.
What I find myself
pondering is the question of what does it mean to live a successful life, a
productive life, a good life. It’s a question
that many if not all of us ask from time to time. It’s the question that families struggle to
answer when a loved one dies and they try to write an obituary or a eulogy that
will do justice to the loved one who can no longer speak for herself or himself. How do we talk about our successes? How do we acknowledge our failures? How do we deal with our disappointments? How do we sing about the poems, prayers and
promises that are enshrined in our hearts and in our minds?
Today Jesus tells
us a parable about the hopes and the realities of living our lives. A man works hard to obtain good seed, seed
that will ensure the prosperity of his family and the well-being of his
workers. He and his workers sow that
good seed, but when their backs are turned, someone sows bad seed, seed that
cannot be used for any profitable purpose, even burning the plants that sprout
will only give a short-term burst of heat and light. And one morning, while the owner is thinking
about his life’s time, his workers bring him the bad news: It’s clear that the bad seed is sprouting in
the midst of the good seed. Some begin
to panic, but the owner does not. When
the right time comes, he says, we will be able to sort the good from the bad.
In the seventy
years that this Parish has been in existence, we’ve been doing a lot of
planting. We’ve planted the seeds of the
good news that the kingdom of God is not only drawing but is already here among
us. The good news we have planted here is
that God gathers us together despite all the forces in the world that seek to
divide human beings, whether by gender or by race or by religious belief or by
any criteria that human beings use to deny the dignity of their sisters and
brothers. The good news we have planted
here is that God transforms us into agents of God’s purposes despite all the
forces in the world that seek to convince us that we are powerless before the
faceless powers that oppress the human spirit.
The good news we have planted here is that God sends us into the world
to share our experiences of help, hope and home despite all the forces in the
world that silence us, marginalize us and ridicule us.
But you and I know
all too well the power of ‘the negative’ to divert us, to dissuade us, to
distract us from the knowledge that God in Jesus of Nazareth has unleashed a
movement that will, in God’s good time, see the kingdom come in its
fullness. When I look at my own life,
there is always a subtle nudge at the end of each day to focus on my faults and
failures rather than on my joys and successes.
Socrates is supposed to have said that the unexamined life is not worth
living, but I often find that the overly-examined life is not worth living
either. One of my professors at Notre
Dame told us that he spent more time each night thanking God for the
achievements of the day than he did in dwelling on the failures.
As we move towards
the anniversary of the founding of this Parish, my hope is that we will focus
on our strengths, on our ministries and on the good work we are already
doing. We can, as some congregations do
and have done, dwell on our shortcomings and our disappointments. But to do so is see a field filled with weeds
rather than a field filled with the bounty of God’s grace working in us and
through us. In the coming years we need
to travel light and, to my way of thinking, travelling lightly means travelling
with a sense of gratitude for what we have been given and for the ministries
God is leading us to undertake.
God has given us
poems that celebrate God’s life among us, prayers that lift us up on eagle’s
wings and promises that give us hope in the future. You see, I’ve been lately looking at our life’s
time and I like what I’ve seen.
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