Come and See

Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
Sunday, April 21, 2019 – Easter Sunday

Scripture: Matthew 28:1-10 – New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

Why were they there, so early on a Sunday morning? What exactly got the two Mary’s out of bed before sunrise, and compelled them to walk back to the tomb?

In other versions of these events – the ones recorded in the Gospels of Mark and Luke, it says the women went to anoint Jesus’ body. They carried supplies and discussed how they would manage to move the rock that sealed the cave. But in Matthew’s version, the women were just coming to see…

Which begs the question: to see what? What, exactly, did they expect to find? There were soldiers posted on site; and a massive boulder across the entrance. There was no way they’d be getting inside. Still, they came.

Maybe because they couldn’t bear to stay away. Maybe because they needed to get as close as possible to Jesus, or to his memory, at least. They knew he was dead; they had seen him take his last breath. Two days prior, they’d watched as a friend took his lifeless body, wrapped it in cloth, and set it inside that cave.

So maybe the Mary’s were just trying to get close. But Matthew doesn’t say that they came to the tomb to mourn. He says they came to see.

Which makes me wonder whether they might just have been putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Whether they might have been comparing notes: “Remember that time when Jesus talked about rebuilding the temple in three days? Remember all that chatter about dying and being raised up… What if … What if he meant it?”

So they came – wrung out with grief, terrified that the soldiers might arrest them… They came to see what would happen next…

And what they saw, well, it was like expecting a quiet walk in the park and stumbling onto a flash mob, complete with special effects. (cue the rumbling earth and the Huey Lewis soundtrack – The Power of Love!)

An angel appeared, all shiny with bling, and rolled that rock aside like it was a made of paper maché. Remarkably, the cave was empty. While they were still taking this in, the Mary’s got assigned to the angelic publicity team, given their own twitter handles and sent out to spread the news. “Meet up in Galilee. Lots to see. #HeLives!”

On the road, they ran into the man himself. While the Mary’s where still recovering from that shock, Jesus repeated the angel’s directive: “Tell everyone to head to Galilee. I’ll see you there!”

Turns out, that message went viral. And two thousand years later, here we are. Just like the Mary’s, we showed up this morning – some of us at the beach, before the sun rose. All of us could have stayed in bed, but we didn’t. Which begs the question: Why did WE come? Maybe you came to sing the Hallelujah Chorus, or to catch a whiff of pungent Easter lilies, to eat the chocolate or because mom and dad didn’t give you an option.

But maybe it’s also because we are trying to put the puzzle pieces together. Comparing notes. Because we’ve seen things, haven’t we, that offer glimmers of Easter hope in a Good Friday world: signs of recovery – from addiction, or depression – in the face of overwhelming odds; a friendship rekindled, where we thought there were only irreparable broken shards; a way out, when we thought we were stuck for good … We’ve seen hints, or we’ve heard the stories; and as improbable as it sometimes feels, we long for more of that – peace, healing, hope, newness – in the face of too much human suffering. So we ask each other, in hushed tones,

“What if the Mary’s meant it, about meeting Jesus in Galilee? What if death and destruction really don’t have the last word?” What would that mean, for all of us?

It might mean we’d have to look at the world differently, from a whole new angle. It might mean learning to see – not just what we expect to see – a sealed up tomb, a dead end; but what God invites us to see: a second act, with extra special effects.
Writer Marchaé Grair writes, “The Resurrection gives us permission to challenge the limits of permanence – even the apparent permanence of death.”

Permission to challenge the limits of permanence: in other words, to engage in acts of imagination. To ask, what else could we find here, if not Death?

To be clear, I don’t just mean magical thinking – a wishing away all the bad stuff, as if it might evaporate in a puff of smoke. I mean the kind of bold, expansive, creative thinking that could save us all. Because new life always begins with an act of imagination. We put a seed in the earth, with the outrageous hope that that tiny pip might just grow into a thriving zucchini plant or an eruption of wild flowers.

Every year, I start out a sceptic. I plant the seeds (ok, to be honest: I usually offer moral support to my husband Craig as HE plants the seeds) and I think: “No way. There’s no way those seeds will survive.” The world is a hostile place: they’ll be lost in the dirt, or eaten by birds, or just wither and die… Yet somehow, they do survive. And so I get copious zucchini pancakes on my plate and abundant daisies for my windowsill.
Acts of the imagination help us to see signs of new life before they take root, to picture the alternative to nothing-changing, then to cultivate that vision. To picture the risen Christ, already on the move, and then to follow.

It was a bold act of imagination that allowed a seminary classmate of mine to finally escape her abusive husband, to build a new life, free of terror, for herself and her daughter, and eventually to become an ordained minister. She once told me, “If Christ could walk out of that tomb, then so could I.”

It was a whimsical act of imagination that empowered a city block-full of children and their parents to reclaim an abandoned lot at 158 Affleck Street in Hartford, and to transform it from a blighted trash heap into a flourishing community garden, resplendent with hot peppers and heirloom tomatoes. I was there to see it happen. They literally brought that corner of Affleck Street back to life.

And it was a collective act of imagination that transformed the lives of Syrian refugees Muhammad and Nour, who came to Westport, CT with their two children over three years ago. They arrived with nothing but cultural differences, a language barrier and internalized trauma from the Syrian war. Together, our interfaith community and they imagined … that we could provide the right kind of support, and that they could adapt. This year, Muhammad was hired to serve as the Imam at their mosque in Norwalk, and this month, he and Nour opened a new restaurant, called Al Shami, after a beloved neighborhood in Syria… They have a third child, and a community they love, that loves them back… New life all around.

“Come and see,” the angel said. “There you will see me,” Jesus said. For me, imagining the alternatives to a sealed-up tomb is a kind of spiritual discipline, especially when I am weighed down by the world’s troubles. Because honestly, some days I’d rather sleep in. Some days, the hurt we inflict on each other leaves me numb, the tangled web of ‘isms that trap whole communities of good people leaves me reeling, and the rock in front of that tomb looks like it’s good and stuck.

Then I remember the Mary’s. And I realize that their willingness to see, it didn’t start on Sunday morning, when that angel showed up (although kudos to them for facing the angel head-on, unlike those weak-kneed Roman soldiers). Before that, before Jesus died, when he hung on that cross: All that day, the Mary’s watched, unflinchingly bearing witness to the ruthlessness of an oppressive system and the particular suffering of one innocent man.

This, I believe, is key: That they had seen everything – the brutality, the anguish, the gasping for air, and still they kept looking. As if to say, “Is that it, God? Is that all you’ve got? Because we think we know better. After all that time with Jesus, everything he taught us about love and justice, we figure you can’t be done yet. We don’t know what that means, but we’re going to keep watching, until you show up.”

That’s why they came.

Beloved in Christ, being Easter People means accepting the invitation to come and see – tombs and angels; death and astonishing new life. It means refusing to flinch in the face of very real suffering, and refusing to believe that God is done. It may mean walking all the way to Galilee, searching for signs of the living Christ.

And when what we encounter along the way moves us to tears and temporarily blurs our vision, we rely on others to tell us what they’ve seen – both the pain and the hope. We compare notes. We share the vision. We spread the news – Write it, sing it, tweet it, blog it, dance it, shout it:

That’s why we are here:
To declare that Jesus is on the move.
To imagine all that is yet possible for the one who denied death.
To bear witness to the promise that God is not done with us yet.
So raise your voices in joyful praise! Christ is Risen! Christ is risen indeed!

Who’s In?

Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
Sunday, April 7, 2019

Scripture: Matthew 25:31-45 (Common English Bible)

Who’s in?  Everyone.  We’re all welcomed. That’s what we say – in the United Church of Christ, and here at Saugatuck Church.  It’s what we believe, right? Ours is a God of extravagant welcome.  So, what’s a pastor to do with a text like this?  An apparent fire and brimstone, stay-right-or-go-to-hell passage plopped down in the middle of our gospel of grace?  Just last week we read about the value of forgiveness. Here, it seems, forgiveness has its limits. In the final divine analysis, some will be let in, and some will be kept out.

If you or someone you love has experienced the sting of exclusion by churches that claim to follow the way of Christ, if anyone has ever tried to convince you that you don’t belong, because you are not sufficiently sheep-like – too inquisitive, too edgy, too loud, too brown or too gay, then these verses may strike a nerve.  So, let me start by saying, that kind of separating and condemning?  That’s not what Jesus is talking about.

God has something more transformative in store… so please stick around, and together we’ll attempt to sort out intent from misuse.  We may even find the Good News wandering somewhere in that pasture overrun by livestock.

Let’s start here:  When Jesus talks about sitting on a throne surrounded by ‘all the nations,’ he is describing the apocalypse – end of days, the final judgement… I know. Hold on…

“Apocalypse” is a Greek word.  It means ‘revelation’ or ‘unveiling.’ Post-apocalyptic movies like The Day After and Mad Max notwithstanding, this apocalypse is not about the catastrophic destruction of the world, so much as it is about revealing a renewed creation  – the “Kingdom of Heaven,” in Matthew’s words, or God’s Beloved Community – established by God to replace the current order.

Apocalyptic texts are not meant to be read like a literal forecast of future events.  They are richly symbolic, replete with cosmic imagery: angels gather around the divine throne; good defeats evil; a wolf lies down with a lamb (and remarkably, they both sleep soundly). The point is to assure the people that this, our reality, is NOT as good as it gets, that the world we live in – with all its violence and strife – is being re-made by God; that at some point, God will pull back the proverbial curtain to reveal something completely new.

Visions of this holy revealing – God’s apocalypse – offer hope in the face of very real injustice and oppression – for the ancient Israelites conquered by the Babylonian and Assyrian empires; and for first century Jews living under Roman rule.

Much of the gospel of Matthew is devoted to describing what this alternative kingdom – God’s reign – may look like. “The kingdom of Heaven is like this,” Jesus says, over and over, just before telling one parable or another. As we’ve found, parables can be hard to decipher, but Jesus makes this much clear: in God’s kingdom, the rules will change.  The last will be first, the meek will be honored; the tyrants will be brought down. The vision Jesus casts is of a radically re-balanced community, where power and resources are redistributed, misery is banished and society’s outcasts have seats of honor at the banquet table.

So, step one in grappling with Jesus’ comments about the goats and the sheep is to consider how those words sound to people who are actually hungry, cold, displaced or imprisoned.

If that’s you, if  you know firsthand the pangs of persistent hunger, how it muddles your thinking and saps your strength; If you know what it’s like to be the stranger, cut off from familiar language or customs; or to live through debilitating illness – then these verses should come as good news: Your wellbeing is God’s priority.

Whether or not we have struggled like that, we can all find power and promise in the idea that God has a renewed creation in store, and that there’s something we can do to prepare for its arrival, maybe even to move us infinitesimally closer to that kind of world.

This is step two in reading this passage:  Recognizing that it contains clear instructions for living into God’s future.  You want to get ready?  Here’s what you do.  Spend time with your neighbors – the ones you haven’t met yet.  People living at the edges of our culture – the ones rendered invisible because they are differently abled, or have a criminal record, or lack access to a sustainable share of the world’s wealth. Hang out with them and see what happens.

This part of the gospel is really straightforward. And it’s not just the gospels.  The ethics associated with living in covenant with God were well established among our Jewish cousins. These are the rules that God laid out for them way back while they were wandering in the wilderness: Feed hungry people, welcome foreigners, and look after those who are sick. These are all iconic acts of mercy and compassion – textbook examples of faithful living.

In the end, we are judged not by how we are made or what we believe but by how we treat the most vulnerable members of our society. We will be held accountable for our neglect, because God has made it really clear:  We are called to tend to “The least of these.”

On one hand, this is easy to do. Look around. There are countless ways to serve people and communities in need. Just for starters:  today, our mission board is inviting us to make donations to One Great Hour of Sharing, a multi-church effort to reduce human suffering around the world.

One Great Hour of Sharing has four priorities:  providing clean water, supplying food, responding to natural disasters and empowering people to support themselves and their families.  Currently, they operate 20 water projects around the globe. Their disaster relief includes long term recovery efforts in storm-ravaged Puerto Rico, Florida and Texas.

Partnerships funded by One Great Hour of Sharing help women in Honduras to get sufficient prenatal care and increase infant health, in a region where almost 40% of the population lives in extreme poverty and more than 1 in 6 babies and children face chronic malnutrition.  They also support economic empowerment projects for women – from Brazil to East Timor; they teach sustainable farming, reduce disease, increase access to formal education…  The list goes on!

Supporting One Great Hour of Sharing is one powerful, impactful way to address suffering and inequality in the world. Bob Mitchell gave us another way to attend to ‘the least of these’ this morning, when he invited us to join the Council of Churches of Greater Bridgeport in a campaign to reform Connecticut’s juvenile justice system.  When we advocate for young people to get a clean slate once they’ve served their time, we are bending the arc of the universe toward greater justice and mercy.

So yes: on one hand, it is easy to help those in need.  There is no excuse:  opportunities abound.

On another hand – and you probably know this already, but in case you haven’t discovered it just yet – attending to Jesus’ list of vulnerable people is almost always harder – messier, more unsettling, more confounding and more soul-stretching than it first appears.  Because once you invest something of yourself – time or money or your personal presence – once you get close, a relationship might just take root. You may learn names to go with faces. You may hear life stories.  And once that happens, it’s harder to walk away; you are more likely to feel invested in the struggle – like there’s more at stake. And then you might just have to take steps, not only to write a check or post a letter or serve a meal, but also to figure out why people are hungry or naked or imprisoned in the first place.

This, I believe, is the real crux of Jesus’ mandate. Not just that we ought to feed, clothe, visit, and welcome because it’s a good and right thing to do, but because doing these things is precisely what tenderizes our hearts, transforms our relationships and prepares us to be citizens in God’s holy realm.

This is so important. How often have I heard these verses in Matthew read by groups of youth or adults headed out on mission trips?  The assumption is always, “We’ve got something to offer, acts of kindness to extend. The love of God to share.”  And sure, yes.  But that way of viewing God’s world, it is too one-sided.  It overlooks this most simple and profound truth:  we don’t bring Christ with us.  Christ is already there, already resident in the hearts and lives of coffee growers in Brazil and nursing mothers in Honduras; in families who lost everything but the clothes on their back to Cyclone Aida and in refugee children riding the rails north to the US Border, to escape bone-chilling violence in their countries of origin.

Yes, we could describe them all as the “least of these” – with the least security, least access, least power.  But precisely because they know something about struggle, they may also be among the most courageous, most resourceful, most wise. We have so much to learn from the least of these.  Much to give and much to receive.

In the end, preparing for the coming of God’s Beloved Community means practicing that radical kingdom ethic, that intentional sharing of resources and power, in advance; it means recognizing that we need each other to be saved.

In the words of aboriginal activist Lilla Watson, “If you are here to help me, you are wasting your time. If you are here because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

Here’s the truth:  We never have been particularly good at sorting out the goats from the sheep. As a species, we people get it wrong all the time – we turn away those who have gifts to offer; we reject the people who could change our lives; we label as victims to be saved those whom God would give to us as family to be loved.  So, we need to learn to listen intently.  To learn the stories. To watch for those signs of Christ. Until our own blind spots are exposed.  Until we see ‘the least of these’ as our companions on the journey.

The Good News is, it’s not up to us to do the sorting.  That task is left to Christ, the source of all mercy, the one who couldn’t bear to remain on a throne, separate and apart, but who chose, instead, to live in the hearts and lives of all those who struggle. If he says that the realm of God is prepared for those whose lives are defined by compassion, then you can be certain that God’s work will not be done, until we have all been so transformed.

So, tell me, beloved in Christ:  Who’s in? Who among us is ready to be counted among Jesus’ flock, ready to serve and to have our hearts changed in the process?  Who here is ready to step outside the safety of our own corral, to give our gifts, extend compassion, and meet Christ in the stranger (stranger to us, but never to God)?  Who here is ready to learn from those who have wrestled mightily with pain and suffering; to be surprised by human connection, changed by unexpected friendships, inspired to greater acts of justice and mercy, and so, perhaps, to get a glimpse of that glorious Reign of God?

Christ is ready to meet us…So, who’s in?

Do the Math

Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
Michael Hendricks
Sunday, March 17, 2019

When Alison asked if I could offer a reflection this morning while she was away at the Women’s Retreat, I quickly and gratefully agreed.  You see, when I write it helps me to work out questions I have about issues in our tradition.  It’s a discipline thing that I enjoy.  Moreover, I already had something that I’d been thinking about – about how our creation story actually has God creating language before anything else – and what that might tell us about who we are and what creation calls us to be.  So, yes, this would definitely come at a very opportune time.

Only, as it turns out, I actually hadn’t read the email all the way through when I said yes.  Does that ever happen to you?  When you get so caught up in whatever it is you want something to say that you never actually absorb what’s really being asked of you?  And guess what?  Alison had not only asked me to offer a reflection.  She had also requested that I reflect on a specific text from the lectionary for this morning.  And you’ll never guess.  But out of the thousands and thousands of verses that make up the Bible, you’ll never believe this, they had absolutely nothing to do with the five verses at the beginning of John’s Gospel that I had planned on speaking about.

What they did have to do with, though, was a parable in keeping with this lectionary season’s focus on parables.  So, I’m like, okay.  We can switch gears. Go with the flow.  Because as it happens, I like a good parable every now and then.  Parables have been very good over the years to our Story Tent plays.  They are stories after all.  And where there are stories, there are different characters and different points of view, both of which are ideal for dramatization.  So, I say sure.  We can save the language thing for another time.  If you’d like me to reflect on the assigned parable for today, I’d be happy to.

It was after I said yes, though, that I got around to actually read the parable.  Are you sensing a theme here?  And I think I understand now why Alison scheduled the Women’s Retreat for this particular weekend.

Please pray with me.  Holy One, you have offered us your kingdom.  And all we have to do to live in it … is to live in it.  Help us to do just that.  Amen.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in school.  The kids in youth group would probably say a long, l­ong time.  And I wouldn’t argue.  Back when I was in high school, I took the usual assortment of classes that included literature, history, science, a language.  Oh, and math.

I wasn’t exactly bad at math.  At least until 11th grade when we started doing Analytic Geometry and one day, I realized I’d just sat through a class and not understood one word the teacher said.  Somehow, I persevered and figured out ways to get through, but after that I did my best to de-emphasize math in my course of studies.  I even went to a kind of hippie college that had no distribution requirements and – surprise, surprise – did my best to avoid any more math in my formal education.

But even with those inclinations, it’s hard for me to read this parable without instantly doing the math.  And when I do, something funny happens to the parable.

With most parables, you listen and you get it.  There’s a small mustard seed, but it grows into a big mustard plant.  Sort of like a little faith also grows.  Get it?  Or like the good Samaritan helps the beaten and robbed Israelite, even though the Samaritan and Israelites were kind of enemies, even though other Israelites had left the man lying in the road.  We have to leave our tribal inclinations behind us.  Get it?

But on this one, Jesus seems to be cheating a little.

Am I allowed to say that up here?

But I’m kind of serious.  The thing is when Jesus gets to the end of the parable, the part where we’re ready to say, oh, yeah, I see what you’re saying, I think there’s a part of us that has a tough time getting there.  And I’m pretty sure Jesus knew that would happen.  And I’m pretty sure he knew why.   And I’m pretty sure he did it on purpose.  And it all had to do with one word.  Denarius.  Money.

Basically, the standard daily wage in the ancient world for an unskilled laborer.  Like these vineyard workers.

Oh, yes.  And one other thing.  The thing this whole parable is about.  The Kingdom of Heaven.  The way things are supposed to be.  The way we are supposed to live.  The way we could live now if we wanted to.  The Kingdom that could be here.  The Kingdom that could be now.  The Kingdom that feels so far away, only because we constantly choose not to live God’s love into this world, into the vineyard that we actually live in.

But first the math – and another way to look at the problem.

My Dad used to tell me a story about an incident that occurred during World War II.  He told me it was a true story.  If you know how to do the research and it turns out not to be true, please don’t tell me.  This is one of those stories I want to be true no matter what the actual history.

As I heard it, at the beginning of the U.S. involvement in the war, the American Armed Forces were building up their presence in North Africa.  Ships would be coming over regularly filled with troops and equipment.  The Army made use of the local population, probably Bedouin tribes people, to help off-load the ships.

It seems there was this young American lieutenant who looked into the arrangements.  What he found was that the Army was paying the Bedouins only $1 a day for their labor.  This shocked and appalled the lieutenant.  They were working hard and deserved better.  He made his case and forced the issue and eventually prevailed.  The Army raised the pay to $2 a day.

At which point the Bedouins began to show up to work every other day.

I tell this story partly just because I like it.  But it came back to me because I think it sort of relates to the parable of the Vineyard.  As I mentioned earlier, the denarius was the going rate for an unskilled laborer back in Jesus’s day.  Maybe it wasn’t enough.  And, if not, there might be a true social justice theme being offered here.  Why are you worrying about who’s getting more than whom?  None of you are getting your daily bread, the minimum you need to live and you need to begin to look out for each other.

Or maybe it was enough.  If so, just barely.  In that way, maybe it was a little like the manna from Heaven that God provided the Israelites when they wandered in the wilderness.  One day’s food.  You can’t take it with you.  Live and work in the Kingdom and you will get what you need.  You may not get any more, but you will get enough.

But whether the wage is just or unjust, whether it’s enough or not enough, the math in this parable doesn’t change.  The laborer who works for an entire day gets the same pay as the laborer who works for half a day and the same pay as the laborer who ends up working for just one hour.  When you look at it that way, it hardly seems fair.  And it’s hard to understand.

It’s in situations like this that I always ask, so where is the love in this parable?

Well, first, who is this parable for?  The easy answer is the disciples.  The first people to follow Jesus.  The ones who would be most parallel to the laborers in the vineyard who were there first.  And the ones who could have possibly been reacting negatively as new people came along and maybe stepped on some toes.  And, if that’s the case, this parable is not about handing out rewards for getting to the party early.

But we haven’t had one of those original twelve disciples around in quite a long time.  And if they were the only people this parable was about, there wouldn’t be much of a point in looking to it for guidance after a while.  So, who else could it be about?

Maybe it’s about us.  About who we have to become to make the vineyard a place for all, about who we have to be if we want to make all people truly welcome.

Or maybe it’s about the vineyard itself.

Why don’t we change the parable a little.

What?  Re-write Jesus?  Can we do that?

Well, that’s pretty much what we’ve been doing in Story Tent for the last 20 years.  And by now, we’re definitely already in for a denarius.  We might as well be in for a pound.

So, let’s change the reward.  What if the wage for working in the vineyard, for living in the Kingdom is no longer a denarius?  What if the reward is now love?  What if the reward for living in the Kingdom is simply living in Kingdom?  We don’t have to compare ourselves to each other or anyone.  The Kingdom is here and now and it grows and strengthens the more people who live in it.  The more people, the more love.  Seriously, you’re new here?  Welcome to the vineyard.

If you come in the morning, you will have enough.  If you come at noon, you will have enough.  If you come at the end of the day, you will have enough.

Just do the work.  Tend the vineyard.  Work to spread justice and hope and peace and joy, each to their calling and their abilities.  Open yourself to receive God’s love, extend yourself to spread God’s love – you will experience all the love you can imagine and more.

Now, that’s what I would call a great parable.

Unfortunately, that’s not what Jesus says, is it?

Jesus does talk about money.  And he talks about comparing.  And he talks about jealousy.  And, worse, when he’s talking about all this tough stuff, he’s not talking about the way people in general are.  He’s talking about the way the people who spend the most time with him are, the people who listen most closely to him, the people who think he matters, the people we would like to think we are.

And that makes me feel bad,

Because if anyone’s going to be living in the Kingdom, who’s going to be doing it better than the disciples?  And look at them.  They’re still flawed.  Still competing against each other.  Still trying to one-up each other.  Still very unfortunately human.  And they’re the disciples.

Like I said, that feels pretty discouraging.  Because what that means is that the Kingdom really isn’t what I’d like it to be.  And even worse, me in the Kingdom, me at my best, still likely won’t ever be the person I would really, really like to believe I could someday become.

But, you know maybe that’s not the right way to look at it.

Maybe, in a funny way, that deeply flawed humanity that can never get beyond always needing to be reminded to love and to welcome presents us with the greatest hope for the Kingdom.  Because what that means is that the Kingdom isn’t some exclusive walled-in place reserved only for the perfect people who won’t ever exist.  Maybe living in the Kingdom really is for everyone.  Issues and all.  Flaws and all.  Needing to be reminded to put love first, over and over and over again.  And probably way more overs even than that.

And I guess the hope then is that if we stick with it, if we work in the vineyard long enough, we will eventually see, even if only more of the time, that denarius for what it should be: enough.  And enough then, is what we want for everyone.

And if we stay at it in the vineyard, we might even see that denarius as God’s love, the love we are promised – the love that is already ours – and everybody else’s as soon as we start living in the Kingdom.

It’s all right there.

The time for us to get into the vineyard and get to work is now.  It always has been and always will be.  But it’s not just about showing up for work and punching in your time card.  It’s just as much about making sure there’s a place in the vineyard for everyone.

Amen.

Weeds or Wheat?

Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
Sunday, February 17, 2019

Scripture: Matthew 13:24-43

Weeds. Wheat. Seeds. Yeast. The kingdom of heaven is like this… Like a field full of wheat and weeds.  Like a tiny seed that erupts into a tree… like yeast hidden in three measures (that’s about 10 gallons) of flour…  What was Jesus getting at?  While it’s not really true that Jesus spoke only in parables, he did employ them over and over again. Parables:  stories with multiple layers of meaning. His explanation to the disciples notwithstanding, parables rarely have a single, simple significance. They are obtuse, designed to provoke reflection, to encourage listeners to tease out multiple implications. More often than not, all is not as it first appears in a parable…

We’ll be reading and reflecting on several of Jesus’ parables over the coming weeks, so let’s start here:  with the reminder that parables are elastic, provocative, often subversive.  They are designed to upend our assumptions, to challenge the status quo and startle us into novel ways of looking at God and God’s world.

In the first of the parables we heard this morning, weeds are sown into the field in the middle of the night.  So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 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?’   

First: I love this question:  “Where did these weeds come from?” If you’ve ever gardened, you know what it’s like to sow good seed, only to find your garden full of those pernicious intruders, the ones that seem to have sprung up overnight.  Where do they come from? From the same soil that nurtures your tomatoes and cukes, roses or rhododendrons.  As tempting as it might be to blame those herbal invaders on some hostile neighbor who crept into your garden in the middle of the night, we know that weeds are an unavoidable part of every garden ecosystem.  So long as there is wind, and birds, and furry critters, weed seeds will migrate and settle into the soil, to put down roots right alongside the rutabega or the wheat.

As troublesome as they may be, weeds are inevitable.  Maybe that’s why the landowner in the parable is reasonably circumspect about the situation.  “Let them be,” he says. “We’ll sort it out later.” It may do more harm than good, to pull them up.   Put another way, applying a little parabolic twist: it might do more good than harm to leave them there… “Let them grow together,” instructs the landowner, “And we’ll see what happens.”

Somehow, we know, Jesus is talking about people here – human community – when he speaks of wheat and weeds, right?  Where the weeds pose some kind of threat to the flourishing of the field. So imagine how this may have sounded to a first century Jewish audience occupied by the Romans, surrounded by Gentiles, struggling to sustain their Jewish ways.  Pharisees, in particular, were concerned with keeping the community pure, enforcing laws that separated ritually clean from ritually unclean, women from men, lepers from everyone else … So what was Jesus implying when he suggested that wheat and weeds be allowed to “grow up together?”

That the community – their own community – would always include a bit of each, wheat and weeds, all inter-tangled?

“Why not?” asked someone in Bible Study this week.  “Maybe there’s even something fruitful about growing up together… about allowing us  space and time to confront our own weediness… to witness, first hand, the ways we hinder one another’s flourishing and so maybe to be changed along the way?”…

Also, it’s not always easy to distinguish the weeds from the wheat.  Though this gets lost in translation, the weed Jesus refers to is Bearded Darnel, also known as false wheat.  Google it, and you’ll see just how much this weed resembles actual wheat. There they are, two plants tangled up in each other – one fruitful, the other not – but who’s to say which is which.

And here’s where the parable gets even more provocative:  It may sound, at first blush, like Jesus is making a clear distinction between wheat and weeds.  But that raises the question: what makes a weed a weed?

For over a decade, my father served as a regional minister out in Illinois.  On many a Sunday morning, my dad would drive out across the wide-open Illinois landscape past cornfield after cornfield, to visit country churches filled with farmers.  He once told me about a particularly lovely drive, along winding roads festooned with brightly colored wildflowers, all waving in the breeze. When he arrived at his destination, my dad enthused about the drive – and all the flowers he’d seen along the way.  His hosts – all those farmers – only grumbled: “Those aren’t wildflowers,” (they said). “Those are weeds!”

On another hand, take eight-year-old Tilly.

Tilly is one of the heroines in the novel The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, which some of us read last fall.  In it, eight year old Tilly and her friend Grace spend their summer searching for God in a small English village where every resident has some secret to hide.  One afternoon, Tilly and Grace are in a neighbor’s backyard, learning to garden. Tilly is weeding. She comes across one small, green shoot and asks, “Is this a weed?”… “Well,” says Eric, the neighbor, “Who decides if it’s a weed or not?”

“People,” Gracie replies.  “The people who are in charge.”

“And who is in charge at the moment?” Eric asks.  “Who is holding the trowel?”

“Me?” replies Tilly.

“You,” repeats Eric.  “So you decide if it’s a weed or not.”

Tilly put the trowel down and wiped her hands on her skirt.  “It’s not a weed.”

“Then we shall let it live,” says Eric.

Here, then, is the dilemma:  Weediness, may well be in the eye of the beholder.  Whether it ‘belongs’ in a certain spot, or not. Whether it’s wanted, or not.  Which may be lovely, when contemplating wildflowers, but what does it mean if that wheat and those weeds somehow stand in for people… Then who gets to decide?

“Not us,” said another Bible study participant.  “When it’s left to us to sort out worthy from unworthy, to judge who belongs and who does not, who will help the community to flourish, and who never will – don’t we tend to get it wrong?”

So, the parable prompts, we leave it alone.  We live right in the middle of the garden in which weeds and wheat are tangled up together, resisting the urge to label.  Leaving that up to God, who will eventually deal with the weedy bits.

And here’s where the parable develops its hard edge: sooner or later the weeds will get, well, weeded out.  In the end, there ARE weeds and they are still bad. Right?

Except that then Jesus continues, “the Kingdom of Heaven is like this: like a mustard seed…”  A mustard seed, which is, itself, an invasive plant. I once discovered some mint growing wild in an alley in my Chicago neighborhood. Delighted (and a bit clueless regarding the propensities of mint) I dug it up and planted it along the fence behind my apartment, all the time envisioning all the fresh mint I’d have for iced tea and mojitos. I spent the next three summers tearing the stuff out, as it threatened to consume my entire backyard.

That’s what mustard does.  It does NOT grow into a tree – Jesus is using a bit of hyperbole there – but it can grow to six feet tall and take over everything around it.  After warning against weediness, Jesus turns around and compares the kingdom of heaven – God’s holy realm, to a weed.  From the vantage of the occupying Romans, the big men in town, the rulers of a vast empire, declaring that the kingdom of heaven is like a prolific mustard plant sounds a bit like announcing an invasion.

And then, and then, Jesus continues, the kingdom of heaven is like yeast. Yeast, living organisms that thrive on simple sugars.  As the sugars are metabolized, carbon dioxide and alcohol are released into the bread dough, making it rise. Leavened bread dough can rise to four times its original volume, aided by just a teaspoon of yeast. Yeast mixed with the three measures of flour in Jesus’ parable?  That would make enough bread to feed 100 to 150 people! Like the weed, like the mustard plant, yeast can spread out of control…

Also lost in translation here is the fact that the woman in Jesus’ parable doesn’t just ‘put’ the yeast into the dough. She HIDES it.

So we have weeds that pose a problem but are allowed to grow. And other weeds that stand in as a symbol of the kingdom – prolific enough to host a whole community of birds.  And a bit of subversive yeast that spreads until it leavens all the dough….what is one to think?  About a man who claims to herald a kingdom like that?  About the kingdom itself? Good news? Or bad news?

Again, the answer depends on where you stand, whether in the seats of power, or under the heel of the empire… Whether at the end of a bread line, or in the banquet hall… in a field full of wildflowers or on carefully manicured lawn…

IT is ALL a matter of perspective. Examine the parable up close, and you get both justice and grace: Justice for those who would prevent flourishing, who strangle and impede….  justice on behalf of those who have been denied the freedom to flourish, justice like a wild weed that sprouts and spreads until it overtakes every oppressive system and replaces it with a profligate meadow in which birds – and all the creatures – can thrive.

And grace… Grace enough to wait and see… grace enough to allow us to grow – and change – together.   As for the bit about throwing the weeds in the fire? Jesus’ parable makes it clear that there are consequences for our actions. That we are, in fact, judged for the choices we make – choices that encourage or impede flourishing.

But it’s also clear that in the end, God uses everything – even the weeds – to cultivate God’s beloved community.  So maybe that fire is a refiner’s fire. Maybe it serves to burn away the inevitable weediness in every life and so allow new life to spring forth.

Maybe God is working in us even now. Maybe our whole lives are a parable, wheat and weeds all tangled together…in the hands of God who calls forth life from the flourishing field and from every one of us.

Let any with ears, listen.

Amen.