Father Riley's homily for July 19, 2020

   PROPER XI - A - 20 - IS.44.6-8, ROM.8.12-25, MATT. 13.24-30, 36-43

For several years, I had a church in Western Kansas, better known as the “bread basket of the world.” I never tired of seeing the endless wheat fields that stretched as far as the eye could see. There are no trees out there to obscure one’s view only a grain elevator, better known as a Kansas skyscraper, every 25 miles or so. And it goes without saying that the wind blows day and night.

When the fields are ready for harvesting, they are a true golden color, or as Hymn #719 says, like “amber waves of grain” shinning in the bright sunlight and waving in the wind. Most years there is a bumper crop.

One rarely, if ever sees a crop duster in the skies over Kansas. If anything but wheat pops up in the field and grows alongside the grain it remains until harvest. The giant combines do the work of separating the wheat from the weeds. Only the grain goes into the hopper.

Today’s parable builds on the previous parable of the sower we heard in last week’s gospel reading. In today’s parable of the kingdom, Jesus once again uses the imagery of growing and harvesting to makes his point. Like last week’s gospel, after the crowds had dispersed, his disciples ask him to interpret the parable for them. Jesus complies.

An old timey hell fire and brimstone preacher might use today’s parable and Jesus’ explanation to try to scare the hell out of his hearers into believing. No doubt, Jesus wants those who heard him to understand its meaning, and he wants us to do the same. A prominent term in chapter 13 is “understanding.” As Jesus says, “let those who have ears hear!”

In telling the parable, Jesus is saying that there is still time before the final harvest to enter the kingdom, to be one of those who will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father. He is also saying that not all will choose to do so.

The parables Jesus is telling about the kingdom of God are all about waiting, and waiting is what we find difficult. Jesus’ followers, of course, did not want to wait. If Jesus was who he said he was, and the things he was doing were signs of the kingdom, they wanted it all now. They were not interested in God’s timetable, they had one of their own and expected God to respond to theirs. What’s new?

How many times over history have people asked, “Why doesn’t God do something?” “Why doesn’t he make things right?” Today one might ask, “Why does not God stop the pandemic and simply destroy the virus?”

Do we really want God to step in and fix every single crisis, stop every famine and disease, end all wars? Some would readily answer yes. Were God to do that, which is stop the world, as we know it bringing all of our human woes to a screeching halt, would mean that His judgment would also come. Are we ready for that?

God is not a God that steps in and out of human situations. The coming of the kingdom is a process. The disciples thought it had come in its fullness in the person of Jesus.

However, as we hear and read his words it is clear that what Jesus did was to usher in the kingdom and encourage his followers to pray for its coming in its fullness so that one day it might be on earth as it already is in heaven. That day has not yet come.

At the heart of the parable is the note of patience. Not just the patience of the servants who have to wait and watch, but also the patience of God himself. God did not and does not enjoy the sight of the cornfield with weeds all over the place. Nor does he relish the thought of declaring harvest time too soon, and destroying wheat along with the weeds.

Thus today’s parable explains why the church neither condemns nominal members, nor judges those outside the church (1Cor. 5. 12, 13). Just as wheat would be destroyed in weeding out the tares, so also,  many people who might ultimately find salvation would otherwise be lost if condemned before Christ’ judgment.

We live in a “weed-choked” world. No doubt, that weeds can choke wheat and stop its growth. Yet, the wheat can also grow to its maturity within the weeds, waiting for the promised harvest. It remains for us, as God’s wheat, God’s planting if you will, to be steadfast in our confidence in our continual growth in God through His unchanging grace and love.

The day will come, when God will rule the world directly and immediately and every thought, word, and deed will come before His judgment seat and be weighed on the scales of his absolute holiness.

With that said, we who live on this side of the cross (Easter) know that God did indeed act suddenly and dramatically at that moment. When today we long for God to act, to put the world aright, to rid us of the present crisis, we must remind ourselves that he already has done so, and what we are now awaiting is the full working out of those events.

We wait with patience, not like people in a dark room wondering if anyone will ever come and turn on the light, but like people in early morning who know that the sun has arisen and are now waiting for the full brightness of midday.

Today’s parable challenged Jesus’ hearers to the core, and it should do the same to us. Jesus was warning them that what they were hoping for would indeed come in God’s own time, but that God’s judgment might not be as straightforward as they thought.

They needed to think it through, as do we. We need to think it through afresh in the light of Jesus himself, in what God has done through Him, and what God is asking us to do for Him.

That’s why the interpretation of the parable ends with the command, “if you have ears, then hear.” AMEN+