A Mix of Wheat & Weeds

Homily By The Rev. Marcia McRae

St. Francis Episcopal Church, Goldsboro, NC, 23 July 2017, Proper 11

Year A, RCL: Genesis 28:10-19a; Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Like last Sunday, today Jesus gives us seeds to munch on mentally – food for thought.

As we ponder life now & how it will be in the future when the righteous shine like the sun, know this: God is active in our lives, even when we do not know it. God is active at this altar, even when we do not sense it.

Like the ladder in Jacob’s dream, our 1^st lesson points us to this truth: as we reach for God, God reaches for us, [actually God reaches for us first]. We reach out to each other. Often God reaches for us through others.

Our Gospel today points us to the truth: Like Jacob, we are a mix of good & ill, wheat & weeds¹, yet, God loves us, God loves you. God’s wisdom is beyond our comprehension. God’s holy & whole perspective sees beyond our perspective.

Both stories today point us to God's total trustworthiness to accomplish God’s purposes for us & for all God’s creation, of which we are integral & dependent parts.

As one Bible commentary says², God’s patience “is a strategy” of restraint, not vague, but wise & intentional & differs from our impatient, quick-fix world, which wants a lifetime guarantee. Jacob’s story reminds us our quick-fix is not unique to our time & place. Like the slaves in Jesus’ parable, we want to pull up weeds now to fix the problem as we see it. We want a sure thing.

We see this in Jeremiah 44, which we focused on at Friday's fascinating Bible study³. Women exiled to Egypt worship God & a female goddess as extra “life insurance”. This reminds me of the political savvy of Samaritans, who live today in Israel.

In his book, The Year of Living Biblically, which we will start

studying in September, A.J. Jacobs notes Samaritans are neither Israelis nor Palestinians & “feel slightly out of place...[& try to] remain friendly with both sides...[to] dodge the political raindrops.”⁴

Jacob, in our 1^st lesson, wants to avoid the unknown dropping on him & takes matters into his own hands to guarantee life will work to suit him. As we learned last Sunday, Jacob has cheated & lied to get what he wants. Now he's on the run.

Despite all his faults, Jacob intentionally seeks an encounter with God. He does what was common in his day: stops for the night at an old shrine, hoping to encounter God in a dream. He takes a stone from the wall & lies down, putting the stone at his head as a quick, handy weapon & protection from a wild animal.⁵

Jacob sleeps. God speaks in his dream so Jacob hears for himself God’s promise & blessing of land & posterity.⁶ God promises more: to be with Jacob in his travels & to bring him back to the land from which he flees.

Notice: God gives us more than we ask, more than we deserve. God refrains from giving us what we deserve. We know God blesses Jacob, & we hear this in Jesus' words about wheat & weeds.

Jesus’ parable tells us God’s timing & perspective are different from ours: Don’t get rid of the weeds. You'll hurt the good plants.

We can't see clearly to pull out the weeds & to see God’s big picture.

If you plant a vegetable garden & discover poison ivy in it, do you let it grow? [Answers: pull them out.] If we see poison ivy, we see a big problem:

Weeds with a capital W for Wicked!

God sees differently.

God knows poison ivy provides food to more than 60 species of birds.⁷ God knows the details in God’s creation. God knows the details in all parts of our lives.

God is in the details in our lives. We aren’t always aware God is here. Like Jacob stopping for the night at the shrine, we expect – or hope – to encounter God in this place. We expect God at our altar. Our altar may be one of those thin places where we encounter God . . . . if we stay aware.

How many other places have you encountered God & not known it? How many times have you sensed God’s presence & been too busy to stop? God is polite & does not force us to recognize God’s presence.

We do not always recognize God immediately. Sometimes it sinks in later. Notice: Jacob sleeps through this encounter. He awakes, it sinks in & he responds with awe, then fear, then action:

He proclaims awe,

declares it really is a holy place,

& renames it to emphasize this reality.

When we are slow to respond to our encounter, God – in God’s intentional strategy of patience – does more than bide time. God is busy, patiently at work in us & with us in God’s work to redeem the whole of God’s creation.⁸ God is at work waiting for wheat & weeds to grow.

Despite his faults, Jacob – that liar & cheat – purposefully seeks an encounter with God. Can we do less?

Despite our faults, we boldly & gratefully gather at this holy table. At this table we proclaim we worship the God of our Fathers:

Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob.

Notice: We claim Jacob,

that mix of wheat & weeds,

as one of our forefathers in our faith.

Bibliography

Eastman, John. The Book of Forest and Thicket: Trees, Shrubs, and Wildflowers of Eastern North America. Stackpole Books. Mechanicksburg, PA: 1992. ISBN 0-8117-3046-8.

Education for Ministry: Year 1 The Old Testament. 4^th Ed. Revised 2006. Gen. Ed: Patricia Bays. Chapter 10. Pages 137-45.

Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary Year A. Vol. 3. Eds: David L. Bartlett, Barbara Brown Taylor. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. 2011.

Freeman, Lindsay Hardin. Bible Women: All Their Words and Why They Matter. Forward Movement. USA: 2016.

Harper’s Bible Commentary. General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1988.

Holy Bible with the Apocrypha. New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.

Jacobs, A.J. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2007.

Jewish Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation.New York: Oxford University Press. 2004.

New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. Herbert G. May, Bruce M. Metzger, eds. New York: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 1977.

“Opening the Book of Nature” class notes. School of Theology, The University of the South, Sewanee, TN. Advanced Degrees Program. Summer 2011.

1 Feasting on the Word. Year A, Vol. 3. P. 263.

2 Ibid.

3 Freeman, Lindsay Hardin. Bible Women: All Their Words and Why They Matter. Pp. 295-300.

4 Jacobs, A.J. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as 

Literally as Possible. P. 217.

5 Education for Ministry Year 1. P. 143.

6 Ibid. P. 144.

7 The Book of Forest and Thicket. Eastman, John.

8 Feasting. P. 263.

Important vs. Urgent

Homily by The Rev. Marcia McRae

St. Francis Episcopal Church, Goldsboro, NC, 16 July 2017, Proper 10

Year A RCL: Genesis 25:19-34; Psalm 119:105-112; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Jesus says, seeds & good soil yield positive results.

Think about positive results we see planting seeds in good soil & tending both plants & soil: Seeds grow, bear fruit & feed a hungry world. This is important & takes time.

Often hunger is literal. Notice Esau's urgent plea in our 1^st lesson. What he says sounds more urgent in The Jewish Study Bible:

“Give me some of that red stuff to gulp down…”¹

Often hunger is figurative, an inner yearning to assuage an emptiness, something that needs our gifts – your special ability.

What emptiness & longing lingered in hearts of baseball's Chicago Cubs & their fans after the Cubs won the World Series in 1907 & 1908? They struggled, starved & persevered more than 100 years & feasted after winning the 2016 series.²

What struggle, yearning & family discord

we see in our 1^st lesson!

Esau & his twin, Jacob, are so different in how they live. How do we war within ourselves? What “fleshy” cares leave us so famished we forfeit our blessings from God?

Paul tells us in Romans, although we are fleshy, we are also spiritual beings. The Holy Spirit dwells in us & guides us away from sin & into grace³ – away from fleshy focus into deeper spiritual relationship with God.

Flesh & spirit are realities & more than the individual.⁴

Flesh & spirit demand a “deliberate choice of values & human effort...[in our] relationship to God”: We're either defiant or cooperative.⁵

As God's beloved children, we know “...freedom in [Jesus]... is aimed at...reshaping...human life,...individually & corporately, according to the good...God wills for it,”⁶ as Paul says in Romans.

Our freedom in Jesus means we can be healthy, growing, productive seeds, nurtured in the good, nourishing soil of Jesus. When we are planted in God-centered soil, the soil feeds us with holy nurturing & we produce an abundant harvest of God's love.

We are healthy & nourish others because Jesus is our Lord, who has died so our fleshy selves are renewed to be spiritually mature, centered in God's love.

What a contrast we see between our life centered in God's love & what we read in Genesis of the cares of this world.

How different are the stories of human discord in Genesis & in our news?

Perhaps the differences are in the customs of our day & those of the Middle Bronze Age [about 22 BC until the 15^th or 14^th century BC⁷] when our Genesis stories take place.

Details of life & customs then, such as a 1^st son selling his inheritance rights, are known from sources in addition to the Bible: archives in places on the Euphrates River, in Mesopotamia & the law code of Hammurabi from 1700 BC.⁸

What may seem odd to us is a life-style in a particular time & place. The basic human disconnect between how people live & living in God's love is the same. Notice the family dynamics we also see in 21^st century families: Esau is his dad's favorite son & Jacob his mom's favorite.

Jacob, whose name means “supplanter”⁹, will repeat this dynamic with his favorite son, Joseph, who receives a fancy coat¹⁰  from his dad.

Esau’s name comes from a verb meaning “to stuff an animal with food,”¹¹ [appropriate for what he asks his brother today]. Esau focuses on the real human, fleshy need for food.

Notice how “fleshy” Jacob sounds when he demands Esau swear to give up his inheritance right in exchange for the food Jacob cooked. Esau focuses on the urgent cares of this world & agrees to this impulsive decision which changes the future.

God-centered timing, God-centered decisions demand a pause, demand the wisdom of knowing the difference between the urgent & the important, as author Stephen R. Covey discusses in First Things First¹².

Jesus teaches us this difference so when we are sowers of the seed, we won’t scatter seed willy-nilly because it's easier, but intentionally so we can carefully tend the seeds. The Holy Spirit will guide us to learn & to adjust our lives so we respond to God’s perspective of what’s urgent, what’s important, what’s fleshy, what’s of the Holy Spirit.

The important often has no urgency, no deadline, so it’s easy to let slide the really important in life, in God’s work, while we handle the urgent. There is usually something urgent to distract us from God’s work.

Think of Peter walking on the water to Jesus.¹³ Focused on the important resource, Jesus, he walks. Suddenly distracted by the urgent-sounding storm, Peter starts sinking.

We do face times when things are important & urgent: being with friends in an emergency, handling a leak flooding your kitchen which keeps you from a parish gathering.

Through the grace of the Holy Spirit, we can stay focused on God’s work when cares of this world clamor urgently. Prayer is central to our work as the Body of Christ, central to our discerning the urgent & the important.

Our worship complements our work, whether our worship is together as we are now or “together” as we read Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, any of the daily offices wherever we are. Wherever we do this, we join with each other, with angels & archangels & all the company of heaven to worship God. Doing this we positively impact our lives & lives of others. This is important work.

As you do this important work, consider the prayer For Social Justice [Book of Common Prayer p. 823], which we will read in unison. Let us pray:

Grant, O God, that your holy & life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart

& especially the hearts of the people of this land,

that barriers which divide us may crumble,

suspicions disappear, & hatreds cease;

that our divisions being healed,

we may live in justice & peace;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.¹⁴

Bibliography

Barclay, William. The Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Matthew. Vol. 2. Revised Ed. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. 1975.

Barclay, William. The Daily Study Bible: The Letter to Romans. Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press. 1971.

Bastain, Jordan. Carrie Muskat.“Cubs are heavy wait champions!” MLB.com. 3 Nov. 2016. http://m.mlb.com/news/article/207938228/chicago-cubs-win-2016-world-series/ Accessed: 14 July 2017.

Boadt, Lawrence. Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction. New York: Paulist Press. 1984.

Book of Common Prayer. New York: The Church Hymnal Corp., and The Seabury Press. 1979.

Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Doubleday. 1997.

Chicago Cubs World Series Wins. https://www.google.com/search Accessed: 14 July 2017.

Covey, Stephen R. First Things First. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1994.

Dios Habla Hoy: La Biblia. New York: American Bible Society. 1983.

Harper’s Bible Commentary. General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers. 1988.

Holy Bible. New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.

Jacobs, A.J. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2007.

Jewish Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation. New York: Oxford University Press. 2004.

Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters. New York: Doubleday. 2003.

The New American Bible for Catholics. South Bend: Greenlawn Press. 1986.

Ortberg, John. If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. 2001.

Sidebotham,Jay. The Old Testament from A-Z: A Spirited Romp through the Hebrew Scripture. Harrisburg: Morehouse. 2005.

1 Jewish Study Bible. P. 53.

2 Cubs reference inspired by Ortberg, John. If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat. P. 23. Data: https://www.google.com/search & Bastain, Jordan. Carrie Muskat.“Cubs are heavy wait champions!” http://m.mlb.com/news/article/207938228/chicago-cubs-win-2016-world-series/ Accessed: 14 July 2017.

3 Harper’s Bible Commentary. P. 1147.

4 Ibid. P. 1151.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Boadt, Lawrence. Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction. P. 134.

8 Ibid. Boadt. P. 134.

9 Sidebotham,Jay. The Old Testament from A-Z. P. 40.

10 Note: Analogy & reference from Jacobs, A.J. The Year of Living Biblically. P.144.

11 Ibid. Harper's. P. 101.

12 Covey, Stephen R. First Things First. Pp. 32-39.

13 Analogy influenced from Ortberg. If You Want to Walk on Water.

14 Book of Common Prayer. P. 823.

He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother

Homily by The Rev. Marcia McRae

St. Francis Episcopal Church, Goldsboro, NC, 9 July 2017, Proper 9

Year A RCL: Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Psalm 45:11-18; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Jesus says: “my yoke is easy & my burden is light.” The Greek word for “easy” can mean “well-fitted”.¹

My convertible fits me well – usually. The gear stick stuck last week as I ran errands. My burden wasn’t light: the car weighs over 3,700 pounds². 

Using amazing skill & equipment [some of which I saw smoking under the strain], the tow truck rescuer wrestled with the odd angle the car took rolling backward after I parked it. There is no way I could have handled this problem alone. I thank God for the abundance of skillful people in our lives who help lighten our load, however briefly we are yoked together.

You may recall the ballad about the long road which “leads us to who knows where, who knows when.” The refrain of “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother,” teaches us about today's scriptures.

[Lyrics of the 1969 ballad by Bobby Scott & Bob Russell are inspired by an earlier story noted in a Bible commentary³.]

My brother, my sister “ain’t heavy” because he/she is a gift to me from God yoked to me with God’s well-fitted yoke. “The burden...given in love & carried in love is always light.”⁴

Bible commentator William Barclay says,⁵ in Jesus’ day, wooden yokes for oxen were custom-made after the ox had been measured to make the yoke fit well. It makes sense to do this so your expensive ox can work well & with less injury. [A legend⁶ says when Jesus worked as a carpenter, the shop had a sign over the door: “My yokes fit well.”]

Think about when you have worked with a heavy, ill-fitting yoke. In our lesson from Romans, Paul tell us his experience living with the burden, the yoke of sin, which can make us lose sight of God who is Love, whose burden is light, whose yoke is easy.

When we lose sight of God’s love, we can fall into the grip of fear, that treacherous bend in the road which leads us to inaction & a sense of being alone. Fear tells us we are at a dead end. Fear lies.

The road we travel with Jesus has no dead end. It has blind curves through which the Holy Spirit will guide us safely. The Holy Spirit may extend the hand of a Brother or Sister in Christ to lead you through the fear, past the blind curve & on to the next stretch on the road of life.

Paul tells us clearly: Jesus is our rescuer. Our human nature is to stay mired in fear & sin & do the wrong we don’t want to do & not do the good we want to do. Paul asks: “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” He declares Jesus is the answer.

With Jesus & the Holy Spirit's guidance, we can move forward & live trusting God.

Like Paul, we tend to start with what’s wrong with us instead of noticing God’s love & acceptance Jesus shows us.⁷ We don’t earn God’s love by good behavior, as a North Carolina priest says in today’s sermon.⁸ We are already loved by God.

Accepting our status as God’s beloved, we can “make the radical turn” to love others unconditionally⁹ & like Paul we can say “Yes” to God.

Notice the amazing story we hear in Genesis of a person saying yes, accepting a new yoke. Rebekah says “Yes” to the call she receives as God guides Abraham’s servant. Rebekah responds, trusting God like her future father-in-law trusts God.

Notice the burden Rebekah takes on: She takes on work when she encounters Abe's servant at the spring. She not only gives him water but also lowers her water jar into that spring & hauls it up many times to water those 10 camels with the servant & his assistants.

Rebekah's hospitality is like Abe's hospitality when the 3 strangers stop where he lives.¹⁰ Rebekah puts forth extra effort to carry that heavy load of water. She knows:

“He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother”

– my fellow human.

She goes the extra mile literally, agreeing to leave home to journey to a new beginning, trusting God.

We have to trust God to get on with life or we will get worn down, bearing all its pressures alone. Then we lose imagination & joy. Then we are like children who refuse to play, who refuse to be in relationship with others, to work together, play together, to live in the fullness of life God intends for us.

God makes us for relationships, for unity. God makes us in God’s image: the Holy Trinity, which loves us, loves you!

Rebekah values relationships. Her name can mean tied together¹¹ like a team of horses¹² or oxen that work together. Yoked together, the team works in unity. Working together, oxen & horses show us the yoke is easy, the burden light.

You/we are smarter

than any horse or ox! 

Through the Grace of the Holy Spirit dwelling in you, you know he ain’t heavy, he’s your brother, she’s your sister & all of us know:

You ain't heavy,

you're our brother,

you're our sister.

As the ballad says, & I paraphrase in parts:

The road is long, with many a winding turn. It leads us to who knows where, who knows when.

But you're/we're strong, strong enough to carry. So on we go, gaining strength for this journey.

If I'm laden at all, I'm laden with sadness, that everyone's heart isn't filled with the gladness of love for one another.¹³

Beloved Brothers & Sisters, I am thankful you do say yes to lightening each other’s load. We do have work to do to fill empty hearts with the gladness of love for one another.

Jesus knows we have burdens in life.

His starting point is love & acceptance, not our faults

& what we lack.¹⁴

When we embrace our status as beloved, we can do as Jesus does:

 “we can make the radical turn” & love our brothers & sisters without conditions.¹⁵

Bibliography

Barclay, William. The Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Matthew. Vol. 2. Revised Ed. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. 1975.

Boadt, Lawrence. Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction. New York: Paulist Press. 1984.

Bowron, Joshua. [Rector, St. Martin’s Episcopal, Charlotte, NC] “Taking on Jesus’ Yoke, Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (A) – July 9, 2017”. http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/stw/2017/06/19/taking-on-jesus-yoke-fifth-sunday-after-pentecost-a-july-9-2017 Accessed: 4 July 2017.

Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. 2^nd Edition. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2001.

Davidson, Baruch S. http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/651535/jewish/What-Does-the-Name Rebecca-Mean.htm. Accessed 4 July 2017.

Dios Habla Hoy: La Biblia. New York: American Bible Society. 1983.

Harper’s Bible Commentary. General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers. 1988.

Holy Bible. New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.

https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/all-women-bible/Rebekah-Rebecca. Accessed: 4 July 2017.

http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/the_hollies/he_aint_heavy_hes_my_brother.html. Accessed: 4 July 2017.

Jewish Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation. New York: Oxford University Press. 2004.

The New American Bible for Catholics. South Bend: Greenlawn Press. 1986.

1 Barclay, William. The Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Matthew. Vol. 2. Revised Ed. P. 17.

2 Idea for sharing this from “When Your Load is Heavy”. https://www.sermons4kids.com/ Accessed 6 July 2017.

3 Ibid. P. 18.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid. P. 17.

7 Bowron, Joshua. http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com Accessed: 4 July 2017.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Jewish Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation. P. 49.

11 https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/all-women-bible/Rebekah-Rebecca. Accessed: 4 July 2017.

12 Davidson, Baruch S. “What Does the Name Rebecca Mean?” Accessed: 4 July 2017. http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/651535/jewish/What-Does-the-Name-Rebecca-Mean.html

13 http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/the_hollies/he_aint_heavy_hes_my_brother.html. Accessed: 4 July 2017.

14 Ibid. Bowron.

15 Ibid.