SPEAKER_00: What is your least favorite chore at home?
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and tell the person next to you.
SPEAKER_00: What's your least favorite chore?
SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
SPEAKER_00: Getting a few of you in trouble, it looks like.
SPEAKER_00: I honestly thought that conversation would be a little more lively, but um maybe that's maybe it's good that it's not.
SPEAKER_00: Um I honestly don't know how I would answer that question today.
SPEAKER_00: It probably changes day by day, but when I think back to my childhood, my answer is immediate and unequivocal.
SPEAKER_00: I could not stand weeding.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone say weeding?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, oh, a lot of us.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Well, um, right in front of our house, running alongside the driveway where I grew up, we had this long, kind of skinny patch of dirt um covered in flowers.
SPEAKER_00: And in the summertime, it was my chore to weed that patch a few times a week.
SPEAKER_00: And I I just I couldn't stand it.
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't.
SPEAKER_00: Uh for one thing, I felt like I was constantly having to ask my parents which of the green things in the garden were weeds?
SPEAKER_00: They all look kind of okay to me.
SPEAKER_00: They were hard to discern and tell apart.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, for another, I really couldn't always see the point.
SPEAKER_00: Why would we consider some plants worthy of life and and others not?
SPEAKER_00: For yet another, weeds can be stubborn, not wanting to come out.
SPEAKER_00: And I learned pretty quickly that it was not acceptable for some reason to simply level off the weed at ground level.
SPEAKER_00: Had to uproot the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: This wasn't easy.
SPEAKER_00: And it often brought with it a bunch of collateral damage.
SPEAKER_00: A few too many marigolds ended up in my bucket.
SPEAKER_00: Then there's the thorns, the bugs, the blistering Hermiston heat.
SPEAKER_00: I remember one time uh we were completely redoing a whole section of the garden, and I was introduced to the garden hoe.
SPEAKER_00: What a day.
SPEAKER_00: What relish I took and raking it across every square inch completely, indiscriminately.
SPEAKER_00: It was wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: And just when I thought it couldn't get any better, I was given a weed eater.
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Man, there was something about the smell of gas and the sheer power that it brought with it.
SPEAKER_00: Good stuff.
SPEAKER_00: But most of the time, I had to deal with the weeds up close and personal, down on my knees, pulling them up hand by hand, one by one.
SPEAKER_00: To be honest, I don't really mind weeding anymore, actually.
SPEAKER_00: I kind of find it relaxing sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: But back when I was young, weeding was a slog.
SPEAKER_00: And today in his parable, Jesus teaches us that sometimes life in a world riddled by sin is a slog.
SPEAKER_00: Last week we heard the parable of the sower, this story that Jesus tells about a man who throws seed all over the place, and some of the seed fares pretty poorly.
SPEAKER_00: But the seed that lands on the good soil fares really well.
SPEAKER_00: Well, today we've heard another story told by Jesus that involves seed and a good crop, but something has gone terribly wrong once again.
SPEAKER_00: And this story, usually called the parable of the weeds, is told by Jesus to reveal a much deeper truth about life and about eternity.
SPEAKER_00: So let's go ahead and wade into the field with Jesus and see what he has to teach us today.
SPEAKER_00: This story begins much like the parable of the sower.
SPEAKER_00: A man sows good seed in his field.
SPEAKER_00: So far, so good, no pun intended.
SPEAKER_00: All right, it was.
SPEAKER_00: But then things immediately take a turn.
SPEAKER_00: Overnight, this man's enemy comes along and engages in what can only be called agricultural warfare, sowing weeds among the wheat.
SPEAKER_00: And as soon as the plants begin to come up and bear grain, the weeds pop up also.
SPEAKER_00: This, of course, is a huge problem.
SPEAKER_00: The crop is ruined.
SPEAKER_00: The weeds will choke out the wheat.
SPEAKER_00: They'll steal their water, their sunshine, their life.
SPEAKER_00: How could this have happened?
SPEAKER_00: That's the question the master's servants ask.
SPEAKER_00: Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?
SPEAKER_00: How then does it have weeds?
SPEAKER_00: It's a really good question.
SPEAKER_00: And it's one that we ask too, because this story about weeds and wheat isn't in the end about weeds and wheat.
SPEAKER_00: It's about us.
SPEAKER_00: It's about the world in which we live.
SPEAKER_00: So using this special decoder ring that Jesus gives his disciples, we know that the field is the world.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, of course, is the sower of the seed, which in this case is those who have faith in him.
SPEAKER_00: The weeds are those who don't, and the enemy is, of course, the devil.
SPEAKER_00: And so it is that the question asked by the servants in the story, as they look around at the sorry state of the field, is the very same question on our lips as we look around at the sorry state of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?
SPEAKER_00: How then does it have weeds?
SPEAKER_00: Didn't God create a perfect world?
SPEAKER_00: Didn't He look at everything and see that it was good?
SPEAKER_00: What happened?
SPEAKER_00: Why is it all broken?
SPEAKER_00: Why has this glorious crop of the Master been ruined?
SPEAKER_00: Didn't He sow good seed?
SPEAKER_00: Hasn't He sent out His Word into every corner of the world?
SPEAKER_00: How then does it have weeds?
SPEAKER_00: This is the question.
SPEAKER_00: It's a really hard question.
SPEAKER_00: In a world where an all-good, all-powerful God runs the show, why, how is there evil?
SPEAKER_00: Philosophers and scholars and theologians have wrestled with this question from time immemorial.
SPEAKER_00: The master answers it in five words.
SPEAKER_00: An enemy has done this.
SPEAKER_00: One of the things Jesus teaches us in this parable is that there is an enemy, and he is all too real.
SPEAKER_00: We so often often want to ignore Satan or downplay him, skirt around him and the role that he plays in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And that is just what he wants.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to be bewildered and flummoxed and flabbergasted in all those good words, that there are weeds in the field, and he wants us to have no idea why.
SPEAKER_00: He is subversive and crafty and sneaky and destructive.
SPEAKER_00: And when we look around at our messed up world and are led to ask why, so often, he is the answer.
SPEAKER_00: He is the master's enemy, and therefore he is our enemy.
SPEAKER_00: And he loves to sow weeds, he loves to sow discord, to turn us against each other, to leave us reeling in fear, to be lost in confusion, to be destroyed by despair.
SPEAKER_00: Today, Jesus wants us to know that evil is real and that life is hard.
SPEAKER_00: We shouldn't be surprised by the enemy's dark tactics.
SPEAKER_00: We shouldn't be caught off guard by his destructive antics.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we should acknowledge the problem and we should rightly discern its cause, but then we should direct our eyes to where Jesus does in the parable.
SPEAKER_00: Right back to the Master.
SPEAKER_00: And the Master leads us from an explanation of the problem to a description of the present.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks to the enemy, the field is now a tangled mess.
SPEAKER_00: The world is a tangled mess.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus doesn't pretend otherwise.
SPEAKER_00: A couple weeks ago at home, um, Anna was working on something in her bedroom, and I asked her what she was up to, and she said she was trying to organize her jewelry box, but she was having some trouble.
SPEAKER_00: And she brought out to me a huge tangled mess of necklaces.
SPEAKER_00: It was as if a medieval blacksmith had taken them and infused them all together.
SPEAKER_00: It looked hopeless.
SPEAKER_00: And I think the look in my eyes communicated that because Anna's next question for me was Is mom around?
SPEAKER_00: But you'll be proud to know I took it on and I didn't just slice through it with a sword like Alexander the Great did with the Gordian knot.
SPEAKER_00: I'm meticulously, painstakingly disentangled, necklace after necklace.
SPEAKER_00: Took me well over an hour.
SPEAKER_00: And I do not want to look in that jewelry box and see if my work has lasted.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if that isn't an object lesson for life, I don't know what is.
SPEAKER_00: Life is messy, it is tangled up, it is confusing and suffocating.
SPEAKER_00: Which plants are the weeds?
SPEAKER_00: Who is my friend or my foe?
SPEAKER_00: We just want mom to come along and untangle it all for us.
SPEAKER_00: And so do the servants in the field.
SPEAKER_00: They just want the weeds gone.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want us to go and gather them?
SPEAKER_00: They ask the master.
SPEAKER_00: Of course he does.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't he?
SPEAKER_00: Like, shouldn't he?
SPEAKER_00: No, the master says.
SPEAKER_00: No?
SPEAKER_00: Is he serious?
SPEAKER_00: What's wrong with him?
SPEAKER_00: Here we are in the midst of this mess, longing for relief, and Jesus just lingers there.
SPEAKER_00: He lingers for quite a while.
SPEAKER_00: It's both perplexing and distressing when the tangled mess of the world presses in hard on us, and Jesus seems content to just leave us in it for a while.
SPEAKER_00: Far too long, we feel.
SPEAKER_00: We want him to come in with the hoe, with the weed eater, maybe even a big old tank of Roundup and take care of the problem.
SPEAKER_00: But notice in this parable, the master doesn't panic.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't overreact.
SPEAKER_00: And he says no.
SPEAKER_00: Not because he loves weeds, but because he loves the wheat.
SPEAKER_00: No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.
SPEAKER_00: Yanking up dandelions from the garden brings collateral damage.
SPEAKER_00: Spraying Roundup on the weeds in the yard kills the grass too, as I found out in my childhood also.
SPEAKER_00: God is delaying judgment for our sake.
SPEAKER_00: If I had grabbed Anna's necklaces and just started ripping into the knot, I'd have a pile of broken necklaces.
SPEAKER_00: God loves his people too much to inflict his righteous judgment on the world before the proper time.
SPEAKER_00: No, the master says.
SPEAKER_00: Let both grow together until the harvest.
SPEAKER_00: Let good and evil exist side by side for a time.
SPEAKER_00: Let those who know me and those who reject me live as neighbors, as co-workers, as family members.
SPEAKER_00: Let this world's tyrant rage for now.
SPEAKER_00: Let there remain for a time broken families and betraying friends, wars and cancer, church conflict and hypocrisy, temptation and sin and death.
SPEAKER_00: Let them grow together with my people.
SPEAKER_00: You see, somehow it's deliberate.
SPEAKER_00: This world is messed up, and Jesus knows.
SPEAKER_00: He sees, and he is in total control.
SPEAKER_00: There is a plan, there is a purpose.
SPEAKER_00: God is being patient.
SPEAKER_00: It is mercy that stays his hand.
SPEAKER_00: It is kindness that leads us to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: It is long-suffering love.
SPEAKER_00: We want God to fix everything today.
SPEAKER_00: We want him to alleviate the tension at work.
SPEAKER_00: We want him to stop the vitriol and the violence across the globe, to judge every injustice, silence every liar, end every suffering.
SPEAKER_00: But God says, not yet.
SPEAKER_00: Today Jesus is teaching us to wade through the weeds, to embrace the tangled mess that is this imperfect world, to cling to him as the only rock, as Isaiah reminded us, and to trust that everything we heard Paul say today in Romans chapter 8 is profoundly true, that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us, that the creation is waiting with eager longing for all to be made right, that it has been subjected to futility in hope that it will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
SPEAKER_00: That this groaning, as in the pains of childbirth, will give way to full redemption and resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Today Jesus teaches us to wait eagerly and patiently and with tremendous hope.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, of course, is our hope.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't deny the weeds, he even names the enemy who sows them.
SPEAKER_00: But he doesn't let them win the day.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, Jesus enters into our tangled mess and wades through the weeds and lets them wrap themselves around his ankles and pull him down.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is treated like a weed.
SPEAKER_00: His life is uprooted.
SPEAKER_00: He is thrown aside, cast outside the city, and destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: John even says that the place where he was buried had a garden.
SPEAKER_00: But as we heard Jesus say last week, when a seed dies, it produces a tremendous harvest.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: And do you know what Paul calls him in 1 Corinthians chapter 15?
SPEAKER_00: The firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
SPEAKER_00: And if there are firstfruits, that means that there is a grand harvest of resurrection on the way.
SPEAKER_00: And that, of course, is the grand culmination of Jesus' parable today.
SPEAKER_00: The promise of a coming harvest.
SPEAKER_00: The tangled mess of life in this fallen world is something we can wade through with hope because we know how the story ends.
SPEAKER_00: We are not just wading through the weeds, we are waiting, waiting with eager longing.
SPEAKER_00: The eager longing of Romans chapter 8, with the watchful eyes of hope that see beyond the weeds and catch a glimpse of the promise that they will all be sorted out.
SPEAKER_00: Literally.
SPEAKER_00: Because for the two separate plants in the field, there will be two separate fates.
SPEAKER_00: The two will be separated from one another and meet very different ends.
SPEAKER_00: The master says, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.
SPEAKER_00: The master will make all things right.
SPEAKER_00: Judgment will come upon all sin, every wrong will be dealt with, every injustice wiped away, every sad thing made to come untrue.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and lawbreakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace.
SPEAKER_00: In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
SPEAKER_00: Justice will be served once and for all.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, I used to think that gnashing of teeth referred to like the misery that you were experiencing.
SPEAKER_00: And I've come to learn actually that it's a sign of anger.
SPEAKER_00: Anger is so prevalent in our society, and it creeps into the church also, like an invasive ivy.
SPEAKER_00: But God will eradicate it once and for all.
SPEAKER_00: Outrage will be wiped out.
SPEAKER_00: The peace of Jesus will prevail.
SPEAKER_00: He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.
SPEAKER_00: Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore.
SPEAKER_00: For the former things have passed away.
SPEAKER_00: The former things, the tangled mess, will pass away, but you will not.
SPEAKER_00: You, my friends, in Christ, will shine, because you have been made righteous, not by your own doing, but by that of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You will shine forever.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: Like wheat safely gathered into the barn, you will be at home.
SPEAKER_00: In the presence of your Father, you will have belonging and safety and peace.
SPEAKER_00: No more sin, no more death, no more weeds.
SPEAKER_00: For now we keep waiting and we keep waiting.
SPEAKER_00: We may see a ruined crop everywhere we look.
SPEAKER_00: We may trip and stumble through this tangled mess in which we find ourselves, but we lift up our eyes and we turn our ears to the Master as we await the great day of his harvest and our resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: So I pray that as you continue to reflect on this parable in the coming days, it will fill you with hope until the day that Jesus comes to bring it all to full fruition.
SPEAKER_00: In his name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.