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 1st 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
Jacob,
in our 1st 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. 4th
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.
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.
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