Yr A Proper 11 RCL
Every now and again the opening prayer(or collect of the day) exquisitely captures the theme of the scripture readings
appointed for that particular Sunday.
Today is one of those days, in my opinion.
Almighty God, it begins… the FOUNTAIN OF ALL WISDOM…
it continues, you know our necessities before we ask
and our ignorance in asking.
So
have compassion ( we plea) on our weakness
and mercifully give us those
things which for our unworthiness and blindness we dare not or cannot ask.
It’s a great way to start the service, eh? Reminding us of our unworthiness and our blindness? Preacher, where’s the Good News in all of this, you may be thinking. If I wanted to be reminded of my unacceptability I’d sooner stayed home –
maybe even gotten to finish the comics.
Hah! All the more reason I say to be here this morning!
The collect does not say we are unacceptable-
that’s the lame leap you and make. No, not at all.
The words are unworthiness and blindness…
hm-m-m- so, am I just playing with words?
Aren’t they synonymous anyway?
Well, that is I believe, why the texts appointed for today
are like a glass bottomed boat in these murky wordy waters.
We began with Jacob- now there’s a scoundrel if ever there was one. We meet him just as he’s settling in for the night.
He’s out in the middle of nowhere (or so it seems).
No Motel 6 for him- he’s plumped up the nearest rock to cradle his scheming head. He’s out there after all because he’s a fugitive.
He’s on the lamb, fleeing from the wrath of his brother
on the advice of his mother.
His is a great saga, as we heard in last week’s lesson,
Jacob has been a grasper since his very birth.
As a young man he took advantage of his ravenous brother, Esau, buying Esau’s birthright for a bowl of soup!
Then when their father, Isaac, lay dying Jacob tricks him
(ably assisted by his mother I might add) tricks his dying father
into giving him the blessing and the inheritance due
his somewhat oafish brother Esau.
Newly married, he dupes his father-in law for money
and later uses women and children as his personal bodyguard.
So if we are tempted to keep every person in the bible
safely tucked away in stained glass
it helps to remember rascally Jacob.
Especially when we’re pondering the notion
of our ignorance and blindness… and yes, even our unworthiness.
So night, night Jacob and sweet dreams.
He probably fretted about even closing his eyes that night.
So at risk is he from the known behind him
and the unknown before him.
But no nightmares this night.
Instead this highly unlikely candidate receives
the sweetest dream of all. An all expense paid trip on the stairway to heaven.
What a sight! Angels going up and angels coming down--- this deluxe and ever so divine escalator of redemption because standing right next to him- to this scalawag of a man,
is the LORD himself.
And has the LORD come to smite ol’ Jacob? Give him his due?
Well… yes and no. ( More word-smithing needed here)
Smite, yes, in the most basic sense of the word---
Smite meaning to cut, hack, chop.
But not Jacob the man.
The Lord Almighty, the fountain
of all wisdom
( as the collect reminds us) comes to smite, that is slash
any remaining thought that Jacob may have entertained
that it is all up to him. Jacob can run. He can hide.
He can (in fact he did) lie, cheat and steal but the LORD GOD
has other – larger than life plans for him and for his offspring.
Know that I AM with you and will
keep you wherever you go…
for I will not leave you until I
have done what I have promised you.
In his ignorance and in his blindness, Jacob thought it was all up to him.
Today we might say – Jacob mistakenly thought that the fate of the world rested upon his shoulders and therefore gave him license to maneuver as he saw fit.
But alas blind and ignorant Jacob, that is not the case.
Blind and ignorant but worthless? Never.
For Almighty God cares enough about his worth and dignity
to make his abiding presence known to one as unlikely as…
as unlikely as… well as unlikely as, you and me.
And Jacob realized that also.
Awakened by the awesomeness of this gift to him,
Jacob sets about commemorating the night and the promise
Taking the stone still warm from
his head, Jacob anoints it with oil and gives the place a name.
Of course you and I hear echoes of this in each baptism.
Oil anoints the head of the newly baptized. The sign of the cross marks this one as “Christ’s own forever”. He or she is thus signed, sealed and delivered into
the
That’s the context for the rest of the story in Matthew’s gospel this morning. This time Jesus speaks the crowd who’ve gathered around.
And this time Matthew does a bit of word-smithing himself.
Because Matthew’s parable of the weeds has details
that grab our attention alerting us to God’s activity (not unlike that stairway to heaven).
For example, in this parable the seeds are sown, not by the servants as one would expect,
but by the “owner” and the weeds by “his enemy.”
Who would assume that common weeds are sown by anyone?
And then twice we’re told the householder sowed “good seed.”
What other kind would he sow?
Or again the servants are told not to separate the weeds until the harvest when, in fact,
farmers of that day would more than
once remove weeds from a grain field.
( Preaching Through the
Christian Year A, p.372)
Idle word-smithing on Matthew’s part? Or is Jesus toying with his hearers?
Not at all.
I’d say one would have to be blind or ignorant not to see the point of this parable and its interpretation … but then that’s the point isn’t it?
We skip right to the part about ranking out the weeds, burning them up before the Master even asks us to do so. Making that lame leap of thinking that the fate of the world does rest upon our shoulders.
It must be up to us to figure out who’s out and who’s in.
And alas, even deciding at times that we are unacceptable and therefore to be cast into outer darkness.
So hear another telling of this parable by master wordsmith Barbara Brown Taylor:
One afternoon in the middle of the growing season a bunch of farmhands decided to surprise their boss and weed his favorite wheat field. No sooner had they begun to work, however, than they began to argue--- first about which of the wheat looking things were weeds and then about the rest of the weeds. Did the Queen Anne’s Lace pose a real threat to the wheat or could it stay for decoration? And the blackberries? They would be ripe in just a week or two, but they were, after all, weeds----or where they?
And the honeysuckle--- it seemed a shame to pull up anything that smelled so sweet.
About the time they had gotten around to debating the purple asters, the boss showed up and ordered them out of his field. Dejected, they did as they were told.
Back at the barn he took their machetes away from them, poured them some lemonade, and made them sit down where they could watch the way the light moved across the field. At first al they could see were the weeds and what a messy field
it was, what a discredit to them and to their profession, but as the summer wore on
they marveled at the profusion of growth--- tall wheat surrounded by tall goldenrod, ragweed, and brown-eyed susans. The tares and the poison ivy flourished alongside the Cherokee roses and the milkweed, and it was a mess, but a glorious mess, and when it had all bloomed and ripened and gone to seed the reapers came.
Carefully, gently, expertly, they gathered the wheat and made the rest into bricks for the oven where the bread was baked. And the fire that the weeds made was excellent,
and the flour that the wheat made was excellent, and when the harvest was over the owner called them all together---the farmhands, the reapers, and all the neighbors---
and broke bread with them, bread that was the final distillation of that whole messy, gorgeous, mixed up field, and they all agreed that it was like no bread
any of them had ever tasted before
and that it was very, very good.
The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons from the
Episcopal Series of the Protestant Radio Hour,
pp.19-20)
So Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, who knows our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking. Have compassion on our weakness, we pray
and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not and for blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of the GREAT SOWER,
your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.