Genesis 28:10-19a
Psalm 139:1-11, 22-23
Romans 8:12-25
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
This morning we welcome back Father Marsden from his vacation!
Despite a vacation mostly in the south, he does not appear to have any musket wounds from a Civil War battle!
It feels good to have him back. And it feels good to be back together worshipping, feeling good about this great and growing parish, comfortable in our spiritual home.
But we also know that we have another calling as Christians, a calling beyond being comfortable with our personal faith and our public worship in our chosen spiritual home.
On this sixth Sunday after Pentecost, we are now deep into this discipleship season, “boots on the ground” time, reminders of the demands of discipleship.
In this weekend’s readings, we’re with Jesus and the original disciples, the Apostle Paul, and Jacob, watching, listening, and learning about what it means to follow God’s will.
The assigned Bible readings all remind us that it is God’s will, not ours, that ultimately controls.
And, all the lessons talk about a journey of some kind:
The Gospel from Matthew: journeying through time,
agricultural time, from sowing seed to harvesting wheat
The Old Testament lesson from Genesis: Jacob is journeying,
fleeing his brother Esau, through time and space to the
homeland of his mother and grandfather, the fertile crescent
(present day Iraq), stopping overnight
N.T. lesson from Romans: Paul’s letter reminds us
of our spiritual journey, that our past and our future
are meeting us in this moment of our lives
This journeying reminded me of some horrible foreign events this past week, images from outside our country, images of tragedy:
1 the seemingly never-ending and now escalated
Israeli/Hamas struggle and the images of the killing of
innocent civilians, including 80 children as of Friday. A
struggle that these two communities of people continue to
journey through, in seemingly different worlds, and yet, in their
own self-created world, a journey and world of suffering.
and
2 the tragedy and senseless downing of the Malaysian airliner
over Ukraine; horrific images of nearly 300 innocent people, their
dead bodies and body parts strewn across the land. All the
victims journeying from Amsterdam to somewhere.
But these are only the most recent stark reminders of how much true suffering and evil there is in the world every minute of every day.
None of us want to suffer or witness suffering. We all want it to end, to go away!
As was true last weekend with the parable of the soils, Jesus tells
the crowds another agricultural parable this weekend, and as was true a week ago, upon request by the disciples, Jesus explains what the parable means.
But, beyond the explanation of the parable that Jesus gives to the disciples, there is a broader teaching in this parable about a reality of human life.
And that reality is. As the children of God, the followers of Jesus, “sons of the kingdom” (RSV), no matter how good we are, we’re still going to be living together in a world with evil people, “sons of the evil one” (RSV).
We will have to deal with, cope with, this reality of human suffering because of the evil one, the devil, and his “sons”.
How are we to understand this “suffering” in the world?
In the New Testament lesson, from Romans, Paul teaches us his way of understanding suffering.
For background, as many of us know, Paul often thinks in terms of two mutually exclusive ways. It’s one way or the other.
To live in the flesh is death; to live in the spirit is life.
To live in the flesh results in suffering; to live in the spirit is splendor.
To live in the flesh causes pain, to live in the spirit brings glory.
Paul even sees Jesus and all that happened with him, and to him, in the same way. To live in worldly ways is death; to live “in Christ” is resurrection.
Paul writes, “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if
children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” (8:15c-17)
“Provided we suffer with him.”
We know that Christ suffered in many ways, but no more so than in his crucifixion. And when he suffered, he questioned, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Jesus wondered why he was suffering. His suffering and facing death show Jesus in a way that tested his own faith and his hope.
Paul uses the image of childbirth, the groaning, the pain, that kind of suffering, as necessary to bring forth the new world.
And he doesn’t mean that only on the personal, human level. Paul means it in the sense of all of creation “groaning in travail together until now.”
Paul believes that Jesus Christ coming in history, and being “in Christ”, means everything.
I believe that both Jesus and Paul struggled to understand “suffer-ing” in the world they lived in. Just like we do!
Both Paul and Jesus, at least as recorded in the Bible, conclude that human suffering will not, cannot, end until the end of time.
In Jesus’ parable, that’s why the weeds and the wheat are not separated until the harvest, the end time, the final judgement.
To do so before the harvest or judgment might lead to good people being pulled out of the world, as well as the bad or evil people, the weeds.
The separation has to be left to a future judgment by the Son of Man, Jesus Christ.
Paul cautions patience with evil and the evil people.
At the end of our reading we hear these famous words from Paul,
“For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is
seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?
But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it
with patience.” (8:24-25)
We should think deeply about Jesus and Paul and “suffering”, what the Bible says they thought, that suffering cannot, will not, end until the end of time. If so, then these should not be words of hopelessness.
For they show that we are not responsible for the way the world is put together. God is!
What it does mean, for each of us, in response to all the suffering we personally encounter or witness, is that we are to do what Jesus did when all the violence of the world surrounded him.
We are to live in hope. We are to live Christian lives devoted to
alleviating the suffering that is part of the human fabric, a fabric we cannot control.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Ralph W. Strohm
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota, Florida
6th Sunday after Pentecost
20 July 2014